Onne Port in Rivers State, South-south Nigeria is seeing new heights in trade, with China leading with at least three vessels calling at the port weekly after one of the concessionaires, West Africa Container Terminal invested N29 billion in port infrastructure.
The company said the huge investment is one of the ways it was helping to positively impact on trade and economic activities in Nigeria by increasing the competitiveness of the port and making it attractive for shipping lines to sail directly from Asia, particularly China, America and Europe to Onne with vessels as large as 4000 containers capacity.
“This has had a direct impact on the cost of goods as compared to past. This was achieved by a N29 billion investment made by the company in terms of yard capacity, introduction of sophisticated cargo handling equipment and electronic solution for invoicing and payments, reducing vessel waiting time, dwell times and above all reducing the number of days for containers to arrive Nigerian markets from the origin of shipment,” said Mr Martin Jacob, managing director of WACT.
Jacob concurred to the fact that the Onne Port was now more competitive with an average of three direct vessel calls per week from China especially which has grown by 22 per cent year on year since 2011. This is attributed to the visible investment and development being made in the terminal.
He also said that the WACT Onne is a one- stop- shop business environment that houses shipping lines and government agencies within the terminal to reduce travel time for customers and increase the ease of doing business in WACT.
“West Africa Container Terminal is determined to becoming the new hub of economic activities in Nigeria, being the gateway to major markets in Onitsha, Kano, Abuja, Nnewi, Enugu, Aba, Ogidi and Port Harcourt which will in-turn boost the nation’s economy. Hence our resolve to keep investing and increasing the competitiveness of the WACT so that larger ships can call the port directly and importers don’t have to travel hundreds of thousands of miles to collect their goods when they can easily do that in Onne,” he said.
WACT is also planning to begin a Roll on-Roll Off (RoRo) service where vehicle importers can clear their car in Onne and also increase stacking area by 100,000 sqm.
Post a Comment