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The Gulftainer operated Sharjah Container Terminal (SCT), has passed a significant milestone, handling over 400,000 teu in annual throughput during 2014. SCT once again recorded double-digit growth compared to the previous year’s volumes and the achievement was, the company points out, reached with an ‘impressive’ safety record under challenging conditions, including space constraints.
Iain Rawlinson, group commercial director, said that consistently high productivity levels were a driving force behind the terminal’s success. “SCT has always marketed itself as ‘The Flexible Alternative’ and the individual attention we extend to our customers offers us an advantage over competitors,” he added.
The 400,000th unit was discharged from regular caller Mag Container Lines’ vessel, Mag Success, which uses Sharjah as a base port. Appropriately the milestone was achieved on the shift of duty superintendent, Mehmood Malik, SCT’s longest serving employee at over 38 years, and part of the team when the first container crossed the quay in 1976.
The strong performance of the Sharjah economy has supported the growth of the terminal, enabling customers to increase throughput. SCT’s figures have been further boosted by the arrival of new services throughout the past year, including UASC’s Gulf India Service (GIS1), which now connects Sharjah with Sohar in Oman, Mundra in India and Karachi in Pakistan.
Gulftainer’ s current portfolio covers UAE operations in Khorfakkan and Mina Khalid in Sharjah as well as activities at Umm Qasr in Iraq, Recife in Brazil, Jeddah and Jubail in Saudi Arabia and in Tripoli in Lebanon, which will be operational in April 2016. It also marked another milestone in 2014 with its expansion to the US by signing a long-term agreement to operate the container and multi-cargo terminal at Port Canaveral in Florida.
