The Port of Taipei will inaugurate two container piers today, which will upgrade the port in Tamsui, Taipei County, to the second largest international seaport in the country behind Kaohsiung Harbor.
The two container piers were among seven that were scheduled to be built by 2014 under an 11-year build-operate-transfer (BOT) project developed i 2003 by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) with the cooperation of three local maritime companies.
By 2014, when all seven container piers at the Port of Taipei are operational, the annual container handling capacity of the port is expected to reach 4 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units), MOTC officials said.
The Port of Taipei, a seaport built on reclaimed land, lies south of the Tamsui River (淡水河) estuary in northern Taiwan and faces west. It covers more than 3,100 hectares of marine area, almost five times the size of Keelung Harbor, which is 63km east of Tamsui. The Port of Taipei was designed to be an auxiliary port of Keelung Harbor, which handles only coastal shipping operations because of its limited capacity.
However, it is now positioned to become a major seaport that can handle deep sea shipping operations and direct cross-strait shipping services that were launched on Dec. 15.
Under the BOT development project, Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), Yangming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) and Wan Hai Lines Ltd (萬海航運) will jointly invest NT$20.32 billion (US$584 million) to build the seven-pier container port over an 11-year period.
The other five container piers in the project will be built over the next five years at a rate of one per year, the MOTC said.
Most of the containers bound for overseas ports are usually transported by road from northern or central Taiwan to Kaohsiung Harbor then loaded onto ocean-going vessels. Containers from abroad, particularly from Western countries, are shipped to Kaohsiung Harbor then transported by road to their destinations inland.
The development of the Port of Taipei container piers will help save exporters and importers road transport time and costs, as containers for international shipping can now be handled at the Taipei port, ministry officials said.
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