Tuesday, January 30, 2007 Cebu port gets good feedback from foreign shipping officer
THE Cebu International Port (CIP) is comparable to other international ports as a destination for trade shipping, an official from an international shipping company said.
“The CIP has high potentials for shipping trade but, surprisingly, there are a lot of local ferries here than international shipping vessels,” said Biglift master mariner Captain Frans Piscaer.
Piscaer told Sun.Star Cebu that although the area of the harbor is shallow, which makes docking difficult for other international ships, the port area is “big enough” to accommodate cargo shipments from foreign ports.
The mv Happy Buccaneer, the international big lift carrier of Biglift Shipping B.V., docked at the CIP last week to ship five deep bed thickeners to New Caledonia.
Processing
The newly assembled thickeners from Metaphil, which is the construction arm of the Aboitiz Group of Companies, will be delivered to its client, Outo-kumpu Technology Pty. Ltd., a minerals and metal processing company based in Australia.
The ship, which carried 1,217 tons of thickeners, has left the Cebu harbor last Saturday for a 10-day voyage to New Caledonia. It has a crew of 15 Filipino seafarers who work as welders, fitters, bosun and chief cooks.
Develop
According to Piscaer, the construction of the thickeners only signifies Cebu’s bullish construction industry thus, the need to further develop the local international port.
“Since the Philippines is an archipelago, I think it should capitalize on its ports either by improving its existing international port or opening new ones,” he said.
In response to the burgeoning growth of the shipping industry, Mandaue City Mayor Thadeo Ouano earlier said the completion of the Mandaue North Reclamation Project (MNRP) will make Mandaue City a “major world-class ports and harbor in Southeast Asia.”
Project
The project, which will be implemented by the middle of this year, is dubbed “Mandaue Harbor City Project.”
The MNRP involves the reclamation of 295 hectares of foreshore and submerged lands at Cansaga Bay, off barangays Umapad, Pak-naan and Labogon.
This will be a joint venture between the local government and Mandaue Land Consortium Inc. (MLC), a partnership composed of D.M. Wenceslao and Associates Inc., Jan de Nul, N.V. Belgium Lyons and Association of Hawaii.
According to a document from the City Government, developments inside the reclamation project will include a port and harbor facility, container terminals and areas allocated for industrial and commercial land uses that will be known as Mandaue Business Park. (MMM)
