Chinese company works on 250 mln U.S dollar Namibia's port terminal

The Chinese company working on the container terminal at Walvis Bay in Namibia says they can beat the 2017 deadline.

China Harbor Engineering Company has the contract to extend the country's 3 billion Namibian dollar (250 million U.S dollars) bulk container terminal by reclaiming land from the Atlantic Ocean.

Land reclamation is expected to have been done by February 2016, while the quay walls should be up by April 2016 and by August 2016, the revetment should be done.

The project aims to extend the harbor by 600 meters to the current 1,500 meters so that the terminal that holds 350,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit can hold 650,000 per year.

Both CHEC and Namport officials told the media Tuesday that they are confident the job would be done within the scheduled time.

Acting project manager Feng Yuan Fei said since they understand the importance of the project to Namibia and Africa, they are fully committed to "deliver a state-of-the-art project."

Namport port engineer Elzevir Gelderbloem said they expect the construction to improve services until 2020 when they expect to extend further. "It took us nine years to get to the construction phase of the project. Such projects take time to implement and we hope our next projects will be much quicker," he said. Endi