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Jakarta Post

Sneaking into city’s modern landmark port

“What is in a name?” legendary poet English William Shakespeare asked

The Jakarta Post
Jakarta
Sat, May 28, 2016

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Sneaking into city’s modern landmark port

“What is in a name?” legendary poet English William Shakespeare asked. When you see the changes made at Indonesia’s biggest and busiest port, you will see it means everything.

New Priok Port, the name given to the renovated and extended Tanjung Priok Port in North Jakarta, will soon become a landmark feature of the city that could also turn around the nation’s economic fortunes.

PT Pelindo II, the port’s operator, decided to transform the old “Tanjung Priok”, the nation’s busiest port, into “New Priok” to make it sound more international.

Names aside, the Rp 12 trillion (US$884 million) project will dramatically reduce congestion problems that have plagued the state-run port for a very long time, by increasing the port’s import-export capacity.

At New Priok’s first developed port, Container Terminal One (NPCT1), Pelindo II ran a trial operation on Friday to welcome an international ship. The practice run involved unloading containers from the Sinar Sumba Voy 400, a vessel with a capacity of 18,000 gross tons.

The trial was intended to prove that the port’s operational competence met the necessary standards of service, infrastructure and information systems. It was also a continuation of the terminal’s trial operations for domestic ships that started in January.

With all aspects nearly finalized, the New Priok project will reach another milestone when the NPCT1 starts operating commercially for both international and domestic ships in July.

The Transportation Ministry’s directorate general of marine transportation is satisfied enough with the progress that has been made by PT Pelabuhan Indonesia II, which started the construction of New Priok Port in 2013. The NPCT1 will start operating in less than two months.

“This port will significantly bolster our export and import activity,” said the directorate general’s Tanjung Priok Port authority head Bay M. Hasani.

The development of the new port began in 2010, amid regular complaints from exporting and importing business players about bottlenecks at the old port.

The old Tanjung Priok Port — which handled half of all goods exported from or imported to Indonesia — could only handle 8.5 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) annually, meaning the flow of goods was overloading the country’s biggest trade hub.

Now, the major step to increase the port’s capacity has been taken. The megaproject, when complete, is expected to have a capacity of more than 18 million TEUs.

The NPCT1 itself, with a total area of 32 hectares, a dock length of 450 meters (850 by the end of 2016) and a 16-meter draft, has an annual handling capacity of approximately 1.5 million TEUs.

Those facilities will allow it to accommodate advanced mega vessels with a deadweight mass of around 150,000 tons and capacities of more than 15,000 TEUs.

For its initial and upcoming port projects, Pelindo II has cooperated with three construction firms: Japan-based Mitsui and NYK Line and Singapore-based PSA.

Between now and 2023, the partners will build another two container ports and two goods ports near the NPCT1, taking the total area for the project’s first phase to around 250 ha.

When Pelindo II finishes the project’s second phase, which consists of four more container ports, New Priok’s total area will be 411 ha.

“The second phase is currently in the bidding process,” Pelindo II’s commercial and business development director Saptono R. Irianto said during the trial run at the port.

The old Tanjung Priok Port has an area of 600 ha, larger than New Priok, but Saptono said the old space was relatively dysfunctional and served other purposes such as an office park.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo should be particularly pleased as the facility will further help reduce the dwell time for goods, progress that he has been strongly pushing for since last year.

Last year, Jokowi expressed his anger at learning that the dwell time in Tanjung Priok Port had reached six to seven days, while in neighbors’ ports, such as in Singapore, dwell times were, and remain, only one to two days.

He urged his ministers to reduce the figure and took various steps of his own, and the current dwell time stands at only 3.3 days. Once New Priok gets going, the government is certain that the dwell time will further decrease to two days. (adt)

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