Maersk sets sail for the port of Taranto. Within two weeks, Maersk ships are expected to arrive, for now for a month, to unload refrigerated containers on the quay of the container terminal managed by the Turkish group Yilport. Another ship will pick them up and transfer them to their destination. Between the mother ship and the feeder ship there are two calls per week. After the test in early August, when another Maersk unit landed in Taranto, a greater interest of the company in the Apulian port seems to take shape.
The summer test
And already the test of the summer ended with the mutual satisfaction of Maersk and Yilport (the latter group is the concessionaire of the Taranto terminal through the company San Cataldo Container Terminal). Bringing more traffic to Taranto in a still difficult scenario is also the goal on which the Yilport management is working. Currently, in addition to managing a scheduled container service for the Cma Cgm company, the terminal has also developed special cargo, an activity that did not exist with the previous Evergreen dealer.
Great artifacts
It deals with the handling of large artifacts such as turbines, for example. Yilport, on 1,800 linear meters of quay, is using the first 700 plus another 300 near the dock’s root. It also modernized the existing cranes. In Yilport, a number of operators have already reported that international logistic systems seek “entrances” into central Europe and the location of the port of Taranto is more advantageous for trafficking from Suez.
The two problems to be solved
But the terminal has two major problems: the dredging of the seabed in the stretch of sea in front of the quay and the connection to the Adriatic railway line. For the latter, the RFI program pays for delays. Previously the date of October was indicated, now it slipped to January 2022. The inadequacy of the seabed, on the other hand, has already had repercussions: the terminal operator had to refuse companies with ships that need a deeper seabed. «Today the quay – Sergio Prete, president of the Ionian Sea Port System Authority explains to Il Sole 24 Ore – has a depth of less than 15 meters at the head and 12.5-13 meters at the bottom. With dredging we will bring the seabed in front of 1,200 meters of quay and the evolution circle, which is the ship’s maneuvering space, to a depth of 16.50 meters ».
Waiting for authorizations
«We await the latest authorizations, we plan to start the works by the end of the year, while the filling tank is already ready where we will deposit the 2.3 million cubic meters of dredged materials – says Prete -. Between dredging and backfilling, the economic commitment is 85 million. Less than a year is the estimated time for dredging ». Meanwhile, on 22 November, the Deputy Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Teresa Bellanova, inaugurated the new eastern quay of the San Cataldo pier, which cost 25 million together with descent 1 and was finished two months in advance. The east quay joins the west quay of the same pier – used from May to November by MSC – and now, Prete notes, “we have four berths also intended for cruises, two for large ships and two for smaller ships”.