THE PORT OF WALVIS BAY HITS A RECORD HIGH WITH IT’S PRODUCTIVITY LEVELS
The Port of Walvis Bay, a member of the Walvis Bay Corridor Group, has reached its’ highest productivity level yet this year with 37,57 moves per hour, in terms of the number of containers handled from the vessel, Maersk Izmir 0908, which exceeded beyond the targeted productivity level of moves per hour. Six hundred and eighty seven containers were handled while the vessel had more than 983 (Twenty Foot Equivalent Units) TEU’s onboard, including 20 foot and 40 foot containers. The turnaround time for this specific vessel was within 18 hours. The speed and efficiency in which the number of containers have been handled has therefore been achieved in the fastest time possible, especially taking into consideration, the time for the shipments to reach its final destination. The Port of Walvis Bay has invested in the acquisition of state-of-the-art equipment, such as mobile cranes during the past 15 years, to align itself with international standards in terms of providing a world-class service not only to importers and exporters, but also to shipping lines ensuring that this high productivity levels increasingly attracts more shipping lines to call at the Port of Walvis Bay. This continuous improvement levels efficiency is part of Namport’s strategic drive to increasing the number of shipping lines at the Port of Walvis Bay and hence reduces the unit cost for seafreight and total logistics costs which will eventually reduce the cost of doing business in Namibia and the rest of the SADC region. This is imperative, especially for importers and exporters which we are serving in SADC countries through the various Walvis Bay Corridors. The ever increasing cargo volumes along the Port of Walvis Bay and the Walvis Bay Corridors has lead the port to continuously find ways to further improve productivity to exceed the customer service level requirements, as expected from a world class port, in handling container vessels. The Port of Walvis Bay envisage that with its port expansion programme which will commence in mid 2010, that there will be a further increase in efficiencies as new equipment such as Gantry cranes will be acquired which will allow the handling of bigger vessels with a quicker turnaround.
