New cranes to raise Sihanoukville port’s capacity
State-owned Sihanoukville Autonomous Port received its first shipment of four new rubber-tyred gantry cranes from Japan this week under a $22 million investment plan that aims to expand the seaport’s container throughput capacity by 80 percent, a port official said on December 20. “We received our first shipment of RTG cranes and they will be used in the container yard to move containers off and on to trucks more quickly,” SAP chairman Lou Kim Chhun said on December 20. “This is part of our goal to expand port capacity.” He added that the expansion project was being financed by the port’s internal budget, and was not linked to a concurrent $80 million expansion plan financed by the Japanese government first announced in 2014. According to Chhun, the four new RTG cranes would boost the port’s current handling capacity of 400,000 TEUs, or standard 20-foot (6 metre) equivalent container units, by 50 percent. Another two gantry cranes due to arrive from China by the end of the year will raise capacity even further, facilitating the loading and off-loading of containers on ships.
