The third container terminal of Morocco’s Tangier Med port, located on the Strait of Gibraltar about 40 km east of Tangier, is now operational after one and a half years of construction. According to Marsa Maroc, the main operator of ports in the North African country, the container terminal was officially opened at the beginning of this month.
Marsa Maroc is one of the owners of the Marsa International Tangier Terminals SA (MINTT) consortium that was in charge of the realization, construction, and management of the container with a 50% stake. The co-owners are Contship Italia Group, an Italian container terminal, intermodal & logistics operator, and Eurogate international, with a combined stake of 40%, as well as Hapag Llyod, a German international shipping and container transportation company with a 10% stake.
An overview of the container terminal
At an investment of US$ 215m, the Tangier Med port container terminal 3 is built on a 36 hectares site. Its docks are 800 meters long and 18 meters deep. The docks are equipped with eight cranes for loading and unloading containers from ships, as well as 22 other cranes for moving and storing the containers.
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The terminal has the capacity to handle 1.5 million containers every single year, based on the twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) which is the universal measurement of containers.
It is expected to increase the capacity of the Tangier Med port, which is one of the largest maritime hubs in the Mediterranean and Africa.
Tanger-Med port outperforms Mediterranean ports in 2020
Container activity of Tangier-Med Port Complex reportedly exceeded the threshold of 5.7 million TEUs container on December 31st last year, an 18 pc increase compared to 2019, a performance never reached by Mediterranean ports.
According to Tanger Med Port Authority (TMPA), the level of productivity had also broken records the same year. The bar of over 500,000 containers handled per month was exceeded 4 times in 2020 with a new record set during the month of November with 553,164 TEUs containers.
