PORTS & HARBOURS

Cuxport expansion signed and sealed

12 years ago

Expansion at the Cuxport terminal in Cuxhaven has moved a step closer with the signing of a memorandum of understanding confirming the construction of berth 4 at the terminal.

The world of shipping, ports and logistics will often contain mixed messages surrounding the ups and downs of predicted future trends and prospects of prosperity and expansion for the various industries. Ensuring ports are prepared for increased demands is vital and while trends can be unpredictable (for example the recent pace of growth of the UK economy, catching out a number of crystal-ball gazers), ensuring ports grow and are up and running at the required capacity when required takes time as well as foresight. Cuxport is the latest such terminal to indicate the direction in which it anticipates the industry will be heading in the future.

The memorandum of understanding was signed recently between Olaf Lies, the Lower Saxony Minister of Economic Affairs, Labour and Transport, and Dr Andreas Schmidt and Hans-Peter Zint, managing directors of Cuxport. With completion of the planned work in the spring of 2017, Cuxport will have at its disposal a further 290m of pier with deepwater access and around 85,000m2 of space for port handling operations.

The Lower Saxony state government are fully aware of the huge significance of the port industry and construction of berth 4 at Cuxhaven is seen as a move that will create conditions for further growth in the port sector of the North Sea coast. Commenting on the development, Cuxport report that they urgently need more handling and storage space in order to continue developing the business site at Cuxhaven, utilisation levels currently not permitting any further growth in terms of volumes.

Looking towards the future, Mr Zint said: “None of this [meeting growth in demand and safeguarding existing skilled jobs] would be possible without the expansion of the port infrastructure by the state of Lower Saxony. Based on the excellent development and forecasts for this business, particularly in the RoRo and offshore logistics sector, we assume that the newly created capacity at our multi-purpose terminal will soon be put to full use.”

By Peter Barker