Kenya's increasing volumes prompts Mombasa to tackle port congestion

KENYA's Port of Mombasa, the busiest in East Africa, has benefited from the addition of three more truck lanes at its 12 gates, previously highly congested, bumping its 800-900 TEU daily throughput to 1,400 TEU, as well as moving 455,000 TEU in the first half of the year, a 25 per cent increase.

Mombasa's extra manned gates and regime of "block stacking of containers in the yard" has made the yard more fluid, said port box operations chief Sudi Mwasinago.

Ship-to-shore cranes average 20 moves per hour and, with a deeper channel, larger vessels are docking, thus creating new economies of scale, Mr Mwasinago added in a report from London's Containerisation International.

Following the congestion of 2011 and early 2012, the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) has improved cargo-handling activity at the port. It is working on problems of delayed container pick-up and issues with the port's electronic cargo clearance system.

KPA plans to construct a second US$300 million container terminal in Mombasa, which will boost the port's capacity by a further 18 million tonnes. The first phase of the project is expected to be completed in 2015.

The importance of the port of Mombasa, the gateway to landlocked Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, has led to East Africa regional rail operator, Rift Valley Railways, investing US$19 million on new rails for 70 kilometres of sections between Nairobi and Mombasa.