Mombasa port surpasses target to post 1.4m TEUs in 2019

The port of Mombasa has so far recorded container traffic of 1.4 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in 2019, the best performance ever, surpassing a target of 1.35 million TEUs that had been set at the beginning of the year.

Daniel Manduku, managing director of Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), said the 1.4 million TEUs represent a growth of 7.3 per cent from last year's 1.304 million TEUs.

Mr Manduku said that the performance was boosted by unprecedented growth in both transit and trans-shipment business.

He said that between January and November 2019, the port has handled a total of 31.479 million tons of cargo compared to 28.550 million tons handled over the same period in 2018, indicating that the port will attain over 34 million tons by the close of the year.

NAIROBI TERMINAL

Mr Manduku added that cargo throughput at the Inland Container Terminal in Nairobi grew by 61.1 per cent, from 257,972 TEUs as of December 2018 to 415,650 TEUs as at December 28, 2019.

This performance, he said, is attributable to an increased number of Standard Gauge Railway daily cargo trains between Mombasa and Nairobi where an average of 10 trains leave daily for the Inland Container Terminal in Nairobi.

In 2019, the ship waiting time also reduced from 0.47 days in 2018 to 0.27 days currently, while ship turnaround time at present is at 3.4 days for all vessels.

Kenya's largest port of Mombasa handles cargo for the eastern and central African regions, which include Uganda, northern Tanzania, South Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.