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SUBIC
BAY FREEPORT—From handling small cargo ships to handling
large ships is the story of Subic Freeport, summarized
by the start of operations of its first gantry in its
$215-million spanking new high-capacity container
terminal.
The
first cargo ship to be unloaded by the giant cranes on
the gantry was the MV Eagle Excellence, a
1,200-twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) container ship
operated by the American President Lines Ltd. (APL), and
which came from the port city of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, a
sister port of Subic.
It was
witnessed by officials of the Subic Bay Metropolitan
Authority (SBMA) and terminal operator Subic Bay
International Terminal Corp. (SBITC).
“We’ve
been waiting so long for this thing to happen,” said
SBMA senior deputy administrator for operations
Ferdinand Hernandez, who recalled that the first APL
ship to unload here could only accommodate 500 TEUs.
“Now,
this is 1,200-TEU vessel, so you can see how Subic has
developed from a port capable of handling small ships to
the bigger ships as it does now,” he added.
Hernandez, who also oversees port operations, said the
unloading of the first cargo at Subic’s New Container
Terminal-1 (NCT-1), funded by the Japan Bank for
International Cooperation, is “a signal of bigger things
to come.”
The
second phase of the project, the NCT-2, will be
inaugurated by President Arroyo on April 9. NCT-1 and
NCT-2 have a cargo-handling capacity of 300,000 TEUs,
boosting Subic’s capacity to handle bigger ships,
including Panamax (vessels capable of passing through
the Panama Canal) and the wider and longer postPanamax-type
vessels.
He said
the opening of NCT-1 is expected to induce further
growth in Central Luzon and as far as the northern
regions and also help decongest the Manila port,
especially with the opening of the Subic-Clark
Expressway, which is set for inauguration this month.
NCT-1
operator SBITC is a subsidiary of International
Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI), which was
recently awarded the concession to operate and manage
the Mindanao Container Terminal. |
