5 new gantry cranes arrive at Ctg port

Two new Quayside Gantry Cranes (QGC) and three rubber-tyred gantry (RTG) cranes have arrived at the Chattogram Port, the country’s main import-export gateway.

The QGCs will take the number of such ship-to-shore cranes at the port to 18 and in turn further increase the port’s container handling capacity and speed.

The ship, carrying the cranes and other equipment, from China arrived at the outer anchorage on Saturday and docked at the port on Monday afternoon, confirmed Chattogram Port Authority (CPA) Secretary Mohammad Omar Farooq.

Powerful tugboats Kandari 8, 10, and 11 and mooring boat Azmat of CPA helped the ship berth at Jetty 5 of New Mooring Container Terminal, he added.

All five gantry cranes will go into operation as soon as possible after they are installed at the designated jetties, said Farooq.

The port of Chittagong, the major and largest seaport of Bangladesh, handled more than 3.25 million twenty-
foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers in FY2021-22, marking a 5.1 per cent rise from the previous year. Overall cargo handling also went up by 3.91 per cent.

In FY2021-22, a total of 4,231 vessels with some 118.2 million tonnes of cargo had arrived at the port, compared to 4,062 with 113.7 million tonnes in the previous year.

According to port sources, this consignment of cranes is a part of over 100 different types of equipment CPA is buying under a Tk 914 crore project, which aims to speed up import and export activities at the port.

A previous consignment of two QGCs and three RTG cranes had arrived in May.

CPA sources said so far, 16 pieces of equipment have been procured out of 104 — including four QGCs, 11 RTG cranes, 27 straddle careers, four reach stackers, two mobile cranes of 100 tonne capacity each, etc. — under the project.