It costs between 100 thousand to 150 thousand to charter a container-carrying vessel per day.
To break-even, you need at least 1,000 containers each costing around 2,000 dollars to charter a ship to move containers from Salalah Port to Garacad Port. This is ontop of the cost already charged for the container to move from China to Salalah Port which is roughly around $8,000.
It gets cheaper if the ship is moving from Salalah to lets say Mombassa and it detours to Garacad on the way. However, these sort of ships need feeder company to coordinate.
There is always a cost here whether it is time or $$$, it is not going to be cheap.
It was all about loosening the suffocating economic and to some extent political grip of Bosaso over Puntland. Djibouti has a ship called the Africa Sun with an 1100 TEU capacity and 7 metre draught for feeding ports. That ship goes to Turkey, Djibouti and Berbera and Mogadishu I can see it landing here too.
What’s missing here is a road that connects to anywhere that can handle heavy container carrying traffic and other infrastructure.
What doesn’t bode well for new ports is when you see the likes of Lamu port not getting any traffic a year after being inaugurated.
Absolutely. The only thing that will make this port viable is the export of livestock from the central regions.
But in terms of imports, that is going to be very challenging, specially with regards to containers.
In any case, it will be eating into Bosaso’s lunch more than Mogadishu or Berbera.
They have increased the size of the port and enlised the help of Ingerop Rendel for the expansion phase.
Am not an engineer, but they seem to be using a breakwater (all be it a heavily compacted and fortified one as a berth, which will be subjected to a lot of wave and wind forces from the Indean Ocean. Similar to Bosaso which is also built in a similar fashion it might well silt up from time to time which will require regular maintenance and dredging.
The fact it doesnt have any deep piles also limits it somewhat. For example, in the future can it bear STS Cranes? Already hearing ships up to 40,000 dwt will be able to dock here (second phase), thats less than the old Berbera Port! Either way it’s still a strategic port in its location as Bosaso and Modadishu was to large of a distance. The only problem is can they attract customers.
In terms of traffic and customers thats any ones guess. IF (big IF) Mogadishu stabalises and modernises it will be more efficient than this one and will take more of the customers and more shiping lines calling. The parts of Ethiopia they are targetting are devoid of any population and infrastructure.
From engineering perspective, its the cheapest form of break-water construction. Just dumping enough dirt and rocks to displace the water and then trying to stabilise with it square concrete blocks - this form of construction will be compromised by a Category #1 cyclone in the Indian ocean. A Cat #2 cyclone will do significant damage.
This is result of using square concrete blocks as defence against waves. As you can see, it no longer has the original shape - which means the underlaying structure is not stable anymore.
These interlocking concrete blocks could have provided a much more stable defence.
So no Container cranes?
For now only ships with built in cranes can use it. Unless they purchase mobile harbour cranes which cost millions.
A very smaller version of Berbera Port before DP World.
The main challenge is the lack of a corridor. If Mogadishu gets its act together they can dominate central Somalia and compete with Berbera and Djibouti for the DDS region via the Beledweyne and Baidoa- Beledxaawo/ Doolow corridor.
Also most if not all of Ethiopia’s Industrial parks and dry ports are closser to Berbera and Djibouti.
At the end of the day competition is good for all.
It is going to compete with Bosaso more than any other port. Not too sure if that is a good thing or bad for Puntland.
Interesting.
Not really too sure if that region can support both ports economically. It is a very small market.
Somali investors want returns on their investment, there is no way they would recoup it with the current state of affairs , no roads, no infrastructure, too far from any meaningful market (Addis), no shipping lines calling, friction with Mogadishu etc. Ironically Puntland folks were the most vociferous and and jingoistic about owning 2 ports while denouncing Somaliland for selling their only port to the UAE , didn’t take long for them to beg for a worse deal and by a long shot. Bosaso they relinquished close to 80% for a basic level of upgrade, and it wouldn’t surprise me they relinquished similar percentage for Garacad. As always time will tell.
