Gulftainer, a privately owned, independent terminal operating and logistics company, has achieved a new milestone as its Khorfakkan Container Terminal (KCT) completed 4,073 container moves in a single 12-hour shift.

This achievement has defied industry belief that the 6,000 moves in a 24-hour period target for shipping lines since the inception of the mega-ship is not possible, the company said.

The full operation consisted of an 8,288 container / 13,005 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent unit) exchange, inclusive of 10-high deck stowage, on the call of the CMA-CGM Georg Forster, one of the French Shipping Line’s 18,000 TEU capacity vessels.

The terminal staff completed the operation in only 36.4 hours, resulting in gross moves per hour (GMPH) of 227.7 and berth moves per hour (BMPH) of 223.4, allowing the vessel to sail ahead of its pro-forma schedule with a grand total of 15,765 TEUs on board, bound for its next port of call - Yantian, China.

Daniel Wright, Gulftainer’s terminal manager at KCT, said: “KCT is renowned for its high productivity levels, and has demonstrated its ability to handle mega-vessels. This new milestone further establishes its credentials as mega-ship ready, and underlines the skills of the staff at the terminal who are ready to complete such a large call in record time.”

Nicolas Sartini, group senior vice president of CMA-CGM Marseille, said: “We are always impressed how KCT is able to constantly improve its productivity. This further validates our choice to select Khorfakkan as our main hub for cargo moving to the Middle East from Europe and Asia.”

Earlier this year, KCT set a new record for the handling of the largest single unloading and loading of a single vessel call at its Khorfakkan Container Terminal (KCT), at 19,561 TEUs, and it recently received the ‘Shipping Port of the Year’ honour at the 2015 Supply Chain & Transport Awards (SCATA).

Due to its unique location, the terminal has been one of the most important transhipment hubs for the Arabian Gulf, the Indian Sub-continent, the Gulf of Oman and the East African markets. This new impressive milestone further demonstrates the terminal’s ability to accommodate these large container volumes, as well as continuously improve on already high standards of operational efficiency and customer service that have recently won Gulftainer the prestigious ‘Port Operator Award’ at the Lloyd’s List Middle East & Indian Subcontinent Awards 2015, the company said. – TradeArabia News Service