MOROCCO's Tanger Med port has inaugurated new terminals in a move to surpass Mediterranean's largest ports of Algeciras and Valencia in terms of capacity
MOROCCO's Tanger Med port has inaugurated new terminals in a move to surpass Mediterranean's largest ports of Algeciras and Valencia in terms of capacity. Being Africa's largest port and with an annual capacity of 3.5 million TEU, Tanger Med is looking to add six million TEU after its EUR1.3 billion expansion.
Morocco hopes the port's container throughput will rise to 4.5 million TEU by the end of this year like Algeciras in southern Spain. Among Tanger Med's biggest customers are Renault SA and Peugeot SA, which export locally manufactured French cars.
The terminals are operated by APM Terminal, and owned by Denmark's Maersk, Germany's Eurogate and a local firm, reported Reuters.
The goal of the authorities at the port on the western tip of the Mediterranean, just across from the Spanish coast, is to attract more box traffic moving on the Asia, Africa and Europe trade lanes.
'I hope we will add one million TEU of containers every year,' port director Rachid Houari said in an interview.
Some 90 per cent of container volumes passing through the port are transiting to other destinations, he said. The biggest market, with a 40 per cent share, is West Africa, where Moroccan businesses have heavily expanded their footprint in recent years. Europe accounts for one-fifth of transit volumes and 10 per cent of the containers are destined for the Americas.
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