THE Port of Dar es Salaam has received four new state-of-the-art mobile cranes ‘Gottwald’ from Germany expecting to improve the day to day operations.

The new machines, worth 2.6 million Euros (about 5.2bn/-) each, have been received at a right time and are expected to enhance quality customer service at the port.

According to a statement by the Tanzania Ports Authority’s (TPA) communication department, the cranes are expected to reduce stevedoring especially at the authority container terminal and reduce the time that ships spend at the port.

“In order to meet stakeholders’ demand to improve port services, the authority has taken strong measures to cope with the projected increase in the container vessels at the Dar es Salaam, Mtwara and Tanga Ports,” the statement said yesterday.

TPA has recently been working on equipment modernization plan under its port master plan that aims at supplementing the old equipment with the modern ones to match the current maritime demands. TPA has in the past bought new Reach Stackers, Terminal tractors, Forklift, for loading and stacking containers.

The TPA container terminal has an annual capacity to handle 200,000TEUs. In the last 12 months, Dar port has registered positive records on efficiency in cargo clearance, safety and security.

These achievements are in the areas of synchronising stakeholders services to enable the port to operate 24 hours. On stevedoring operations, an improvement was recorded from 415 tonnes per gang shift of last year to 446 per gang shift in October, this year.

While on shore-handling, cars productivity also improved per shift from 210 units to 497 units during the same period. Also yard density at the main container terminal improved from an average of 62 per cent in 2011 to 52 per cent by October 2012 reflecting a no terminal congestion situation.

Source : abdas.org