Firm to unveil $858.3m automated container terminal

APM Terminals has concluded plans to invest 758 million euros ($858.3 million) in a new transshipment terminal in Tangier, Morocco, that will be the first automated terminal in Africa.

APM Terminals, a unit of Denmark’s shipping and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk, has been named as the operator of the new container transshipment terminal at the Tanger Med 2 port complex.

The group already operates the APM Terminals Tangier facility at Tanger Med 1 port, which started operations in July of 2007 and handled 1.7 million TEUs in 2015.

The new terminal will have annual capacity of five million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs).

Maersk Line, also a part A.P. Moller-Maersk, will be an important customer of the new terminal.

According to maritime executive.com, the new terminal is scheduled to open in 2019, under the terms of a 30-year concession agreement with the Tanger Med Special Agency (TMSA), which has responsibility for the development and management of the Tanger Med port complex.

The Tanger-Med port complex is strategically located on Africa’s northwest coast near the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea on the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea meet. Tanger-Med is the second-busiest container port on the African continent after Port Said, Egypt. The new APM Terminals MedPort Tangier terminal will increase the port’s total annual throughput capacity to over nine million TEUs.