Posted on January, 30, 2019 at 08:14 am
By Philip Mwakio
NAIROBI, KENYA: Clinker, Wheat and Steel dominated imports at the Port of Mombasa during the third week of the year, Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) in its weekly performance report has revealed.
Clinker discharged recorded 94,910 metric tons to form the highest volume of lose cargo handled in the week ended January 16th 2019.
The commodity is shipped in bulk from various ports of loading and discharged on direct delivery upon arrival at the port.
''The conventional cargo terminal received 19 general cargo ships and handled a total of 223,529 metric tons at an average of 31,933 metric tons per day. Total imports offloaded recorded 209237 metric tons compared to exports that registered 14292 metric tons,'' KPA said in the report.
Other general cargo handled in high tonnage included bulk wheat and steel imports that accounted for 67,546 metric tons and 38,914 metric tons respectively.
The conventional cargo terminal also handled 11,000 metric tons of bulk illuminate export from the Kwale Mineral Sands operated by Base Titanium, 562 metric tons of project cargo, 4,203 metric tons in cargo containers, 2856 units of motor vehicles and 86 trucks.
Cargo deliveries by road transport recorded 141691 metric tons while the conveyor belt evacuated 67546 metric tons. Delivery of Motorcar units on direct recorded 2405 units leaving a balance of 530 units.
Container handling operations at the two container terminals went on as usual with 12 container carriers docking to record a ship average working time of 2. 44 days.
The import container dwell time during the week registered 3.78 days down from 4.29 days in the previous week.
The vessels discharged 13,230 Twenty Feet Equivalent Units (TEUs), full and empty and loaded another 12,691 TEUs.
KPA reported that Road transport was still commanding the lion’s share of the container deliveries from the Port accounting for 7,931 TEUs compared to the Standard Gauge Rail (SGR) which delivered 5,060 TEUs.
Full containers loaded onto the ships for export registered 3883 TEUs while empties recorded 8,808 TEUs up from 7,294 TEUs in the previous week.
Imports population breakdown at the container yards revealed that Transit market bound containers were 4,177 TEUs almost twice local destined containers that registered 2,332 TEUs.
Uganda was still in pole position as it retained her leading position in the transit market accounting for 3,459 TEUs translating to 82.8 percent followed at a distant second by Tanzania which recorded 208 TEUs.
Other transit countries included Democratic Republic of Congo which accounted for 187 TEUs, Rwanda with 163 TEUs, and South Sudan with 137 TEUs while Burundi and Somalia recorded 11 TEUs and 9 TEUs respectively.
Still in the Port operations, the Inland Container Depot, Nairobi (ICDN) reported a yard population of 10,328TEUs with import container dwell time recording 12 days.
A summary of container age analysis showed that 3,203 TEUs had stayed at the depot for over 21 days.
Containers that were up to 4 days old at the depot registered 2,662 TEUs while those which had stayed for between 5-10 days recorded 2,351 TEUs. Containers that had remained at the ICDN for between 11-21 days registered 2,027 TEUs.
The Depot received 4,834 TEUs imports and delivered 5383 TEUs. Export containers received recorded 287 TEUs while 278 were delivered out.
Meanwhile, KPA is further reporting that forecast for the next 14 days of port business showed that 12 container vessels were expected to dock at the two Container Terminals to discharge 9,230TEUs and load 8,982TEUs.
Source: Standard Digital