The government of Portugal has launched an international tender for a container terminal at the southern port of Sines. The work is to be carried out as a public-private partnership, with the private sector providing its €640m funding.
The Vasco da Gama Terminal, as it will be called, will have an area of 46ha, 15 dock gantries and a 17.5m draft. It will add the capacity to handle 3.5 million containers to Portugal’s largest artificial port and its 1.4km pier will be able to admit any size of container ship. The depth will be 17.5m, compared with 16m at the ports present Terminal XXI.
Ana Paula Vitorino, Portugal’s minister for the sea, told reporters that a concession period of would last 50 years, and consortiums would have nine months to submit their bids.
The Macauhub website reports that Chinese companies have been positioning themselves to enter the Portuguese infrastructure market in expectation of large projects being launched.
A delegation from China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Group, part of the China State Construction Engineering Corporation, was recently in Lisbon and in Porto to meet with officials from construction trade associations and individual companies.
Image: The Port of Sines (APS/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Further reading:
