Malaysia’s Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP) plans to expand its capacity from the current 12.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) to 15 million TEUs in the next five years in response to intensifying competition.
Continual capacity expansion is vital to ensure that PTP is able to handle future growth while offering key valuable business propositions to new and potential customers, said PTP deputy chief executive officer Hanif Hamid.
“We have submitted our papers to the Government to gain its support financially, in terms of capital dredging to expand our current channel,” he told Bernama, the country’s national news agency.
Hanif said that under the 11th Malaysian Plan, there should be some “ports money” for the industry players to tap into and hoped the company would be able to convince the government that PTP is viable and would contribute significantly to the country’s economic growth as well as that of the state of Johor where the port is located.
“In order for us to expand, we need to further dredge the seabed. The existing depth of our channel is about 16m. In order to effectively accommodate the largest container vessels in the world without any tidal restrictions, there is a need to deepen the channel to 18.5m. Furthermore, there is also an urgent need to widen the channel from the current 400m to 600m to prevent bottleneck or congestion,” he said.
PTP made the request amid reports that PSA Singapore is planning to move all of its port container-related activities from Pasir Panjang to Tuas from 2027. Tuas is expected to eventually have a handling capacity of 65 million TEUs of cargo annually, doubling the amount handled by Singapore last year. Accordingly, works on the Tuas mega port started in the middle of this year and are expected to be completed in 2021.
As of June 2015, PTP has handled about 4.5 million TEUs and is on track to achieve its target of more than nine million TEUs this year.
As one of the busiest ports in Malaysia, PTP handles mostly transshipments, with customers from the world’s top five shipping lines including Maersk Line, MSC, CMA CGM, and Evergreen.
PTP, a joint venture between MMC Corp (70% stake) and APM Terminals (30%), is Malaysia’s largest container terminal.
