Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi will inaugurate Pakistan's first coal, clinker and cement terminal at Port Qasim established by the sponsors of Marine Group Saturday. The project has been completed this year and succeeded to berth 12 coal ships at the terminal since beginning of operations.
The company has invested around $285 million in the establishment of the county's first and only common user coal, cement and clinker handling terminal at Port Qasim. The terminal is capable of handling 12 million tons of coal in bulk per annum, and with an average discharge rate of over 30,000 tons per day, the cargo handling time at PIBT is at international levels of efficiency, CEO PIBT, Sharique Siddiqui said. "We have currently over 20,000 shareholders and we work tirelessly to add value to our shareholders across society," he added.
PIBTL, under a 30-year BOT agreement with Port Qasim Authority, has built its own jetty and is equipped with two coal ship unloading cranes and one cement/clinker loading crane. The state-of-the-art infrastructure at terminal not only reduces handling time, but will also decrease wastage of coal and cement during handling and their amalgamation with external particles during storage. PIBTL's vision is to transform the port infrastructure through investment in the latest technologies and the best global standards for handling cargo, and its goal is to strive for excellence, and to build world-class port infrastructure in the country, the CEO stated.
The dedicated terminal is dredged to 13.0 meters deep and capable of handling ships of up to 65,000 tons. The terminal operates more speedily, efficiently and reliably than the coal operation's done by stevedores at Karachi Port. The terminal jetty has been built to handle deeper draft vessels of 15.5m and PIBT will be able to handle larger vessels once Port Qasim dredges the channel deeper beyond 13m draft.
A coal cargo ship with similar tonnage of cargo currently takes around five days at KPT while the same cargo can be handled within two days at PIBTL due to the modern and mechanized handling system. Port Qasim, has advantages not only for its proximity to Karachi, the financial hub, but also due to its linkage with the rest of the country through the National Highway, both of which would help reduce costs for importers.
The PIBT CEO said that now a modern coal handling terminal has been added to the Port infrastructure of the country, the handling of coal should be done at the dedicated terminal to eliminate pollution caused by coal handling at Karachi Port, which is in the heart of the city. PIBT is financed by the IFC a member of the World Bank and has built the facility on the World Bank standard of environmental, health and safety. PIBTL is a public listed company quoted on Pakistan Stock Exchange and is sponsored by the Marine Group of Companies and also partly financed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group.