5 months ago
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Port company Kingston Wharves Limited will be a constructing a multi-level holding area for auto cargo next to its Newport West terminal in Kingston to facilitate the motor vehicle cargo transshipped through the port.
Its capacity will be 10,000 CEU or car equivalent units.
The five-storey structure will be developed in two phases, the first of which will cost about US$15 million, CEO Mark Williams said.
Kingston Wharves handled in excess of 170,000 motor vehicle units that were transshipped over the past year to 45 destinations, including places such as Australia and New Zealand, Williams reported to shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting last week. India is also expected to become another touch point soon.
The first phase of the car cargo tower encompasses the ground level and two other storeys.
“What the (Spanish) contractors are doing now is that they’re proceeding to detailed design …,” Williams told the Financial Gleaner, adding that an initial deposit of US$400,000 is being wired to the contractors for that element of the work to begin.
“The minute we get back the detailed design, we’ll submit it to KSAMC” for approval of what will be a steel structure that can be assembled easily and taken down easily,” he said.
“We’re starting with 1,800 to 2,000 (car spaces). The plan ultimately is to accommodate 10,000 car equivalent units on the tower,” he said.
Construction of the initial is expected to begin in three months.
But Kingston Wharves is now weighing whether to combine both phases of the project.
“We’re having that conversation with the shipping lines to merge phase one and two together, but that is still preliminary,” Williams said.
The port executive said Kingston Wharves can do a lot more business than the 170,000 car equivalent units or CEUs it currently transships. One CEU is equivalent to the space for a standard passenger car. As such, it is anticipatory of a new plan by the Jamaican government to change the road alignment for Marcus Garvey Drive, which will create more port lands.
“All that property south of that [new alignment] will become the port boundary …” Williams said.
“We have the capacity to move a lot more (cars); so, we really need space to expand and develop,” he told the Financial Gleaner. The Jamaican government has “some high-level design of how to move the road. So that’s a conversation that we’re having regularly with them,” he said.
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