Container Terminal Establishes New Record in Handling Box Freight

SPAIN – For anyone unfamiliar with the process loading or unloading a cargo vessel summons up a mental picture of men sweating deep in the holds whilst a ships derrick lowers and raises boxes and bags. In fact even with a basic knowledge of container freight one might be forgiven for assuming that one shore mounted crane takes on the task of stowing and offloading the 20 and 40 foot boxes whereas in fact the truth is usually much more complicated, a point proven by the Barcelona Europe South Terminal (BEST) which broke a local record recently.

When the MSC Livorno, a 14,000 TEU vessel docked in Barcelona at the end of last month the terminal utilised a total of 8 ship-to-shore (STS) gantry cranes simultaneously, the first time this has been managed at the port. The MSC Livorno is 365 metres in length with a breadth of 51 metres spanning 20 rows of containers. A total of 1,471 containers were loaded and 2,080 were discharged. Guillermo Belcastro, General Manager of BEST, said:

“BEST is the only terminal in the Mediterranean area that features 11 ship-to-shore gantry cranes able to operate simultaneously on this kind of next generation container ship.”

BEST’s average gross crane rate (GCR) of 40 moves per hour is one of the highest productivity ratios in the Mediterranean. The terminal management says this extremely high level of crane productivity, together with the total number of available cranes, make it possible to achieve outstanding vessel performance rates up to 220 moves per hour, per ves

The Barcelona terminal also provides multimodal logistics and has an eight-track railway facility, the biggest on-dock railway terminal of any port in the Mediterranean. The rail facilities currently serve a large hinterland within a 600 kilometre radius of Barcelona. The potential market for rail has expanded in recent years supporting the strategic objective of the Port of Barcelona to become the Mediterranean’s alternative access point for European markets.