Record year at
Port of Beirut

Cars and containers up

The Port of Beirut (PoB) continued to realize growth last year, with profits rising by 13 percent to $239 million compared to 2014.

Elie Zakhour, Chairman of the International Chamber of Navigation (ACN), said: “The two main reasons behind growth is the record number of imported cars and rising number of local containers.”

The number of imported cars went up by 22 percent to 112,000 units. Port of Beirut is the only port to receive new cars. Other ports have stopped receiving cars, except for the Tripoli Port, which only admits around 5,000 used cars per year.

Local containers reached 799,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent unit), up by five percent. “Land transport to Arab countries was substituted with maritime transport,” he said.

Transshipment dropped 26 percent to 332,000 TEUs. “The bad shape of the economy in Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Syria was reflected by the number of transshipped containers, according to Zakhour.

Industrialists and farmers have benefited from the new container terminal. “Our monthly exports grew from 3,500 containers to over 7,600 containers,” he said.

The number of vessels continued to drop due to the global trend for larger vessels (minus eight percent). When the vessel has a larger size, the freight’s cost drops. “We used to receive vessels with a capacity of 2,000 tons and now 14,000 tons,” he said.

Zakhour said that the controversial reclamation of Quay No. 4 has stopped. The Navy is expected to receive warships from France. “The fourth quay is the only quay with the capacity to receive them,” he said.