The shipping platform

Location: Walvis Bay is the primary port of Namibia, situated on the central W coast of Namibia, on the SE side of Walvis Bay. General overview: The port is protected by a sand spit over 9km in length and the harbour consists of two sections: the commercial port and the fishing port. The commercial harbour has a range of terminal facilities that can handle bulk, containers, frozen and dry cargoes. The port is becoming a popular transhipment port for cargoes destined for South Africa via the trans-Kalahari corridor. The port handles exports of salt, manganese ore, fluorspar, fish, marble/granite and containers. Imports consist of coal, petroleum products, grain, fishmeal, sugar, offshore oil, industry commodities, equipment and containers. Walvis Bay has a well-equipped ship repair industry which includes three EB&H Namibia-owned floating docks with lifting capacity of 6,500, 8,000 and 15,000 tonnes respectively. The port’s container terminal at Walvis Bay can accommodate ground slots for 3875 containers with provision for 482 reefer container plug points. The container terminal can host about 350,000 containers per annum, therefore various business development opportunities are being undertaken to facilitate imports and export containers at this Port. Traffic figures: Approx 3,000 vessels, 5,000,000t of cargo, which includes salt exports (500,000t) and petroleum imports (800,000t), handled annually. Approx 1,167 vessels (60% fishing) handled annually. Load line zone: Tropical. Max size: LOA 300 m (basically 280 m, greater on request) Draught: Berth 1 & 2: 13.5 m; Berth 3: 12.8 m; Berth 4-9: 10.6 m; NCT: 40 m. The largest vessel called at the port: LOA: 336 m, draught: 13.5 m, deadweight: 115,077 t.