Since early 21st century, Saigon Newport Company (now ‘Saigon Newport Corporation’ or ‘SNP’) was fully aware of the vital importance to develop a seaport (deepwater terminal) in Vietnam to well catch up with the growing trend of international containerization across the globe. In response to the State’s master plan on developing terminal systems in Vietnam until 2020, SNP had promptly taken actions to make research and feasibility study and develop Tan Cang – Cai Mep Deepwater Terminal Project in Tan Thanh District, Ba Ria – Vung Tau Province, the ever first deepwater terminal in Vietnam. Favored in geographical conditions and supported by favorable investment policy, Cai Mep – Thi Vai Port Cluster in general and Tan Cang – Cai Mep Deepwater Terminal Project in particular shall be an ideal location for handling both inbounds and outbounds as well as crucially boost the development of maritime services and port-related services for the whole Southern Focal Economic Area.
Construction for Tan Cang – Cai Mep Deepwater Terminal started in early 2006 on the area of 60ha. With the depth at berth of 15.8m, the terminal is designed to accommodate vessels having capacity of up to 110,000 DWTs (or 9,000 TEUs) which enables mother vessels to directly call between Asia Pacific terminals and Amerian and European terminals, reducing container delivery/receipt time and cost for shipping lines and shippers/consignees.
Phase 1 includes 20ha of CY and 300m of berth length and is equipped with 03 modern Post-Panamax STS cranes and 10 RTGs 6 1 along with state-of-the-art real-time terminal management system namely TOPX from RBS (Australia). This terminal, functional since June 03, 2009, is constructed and operated by SNP.
Phase 2 includes 40ha of CY and 600m of berth length. Construction started in late 2008 and is expected to complete by the end of 2010 and be operational in early February 2011. With phase 2, SNP also invested on terminal infrastructure and at the same time offered the lease of terminal infrastructure to a joint venture namely Tan Cang – Cai Mep International Terminal (TCIT). This project is expected to bring about high economic efficiency now that all partners in the joint venture are prestigious terminal operator and container vessel operator. SNP is currently the leading developer and operator in Vietnam while other partners are world-class shipping lines from Asia (MOL from Japan, HANJIN from Korea and WHL from Taiwan). With strong financial resource, advanced terminal management technology, abundant cargo flow fetched by these shipping lines together with lots of experience in container terminal operations, large-scale logistics network, outstanding service quality and available vast amount of customers of SNP, the joint venture model shall be at no doubt huge success.
