Africa-Press – Botswana. As the global freight and logistics market expands, Botswana continues to keep up with developments through strategic positioning of its dry port in Walvis Bay, Namibia.
Speaking in an interview on Wednesday, Sea Rail acting managing director, Mr Derick Mokgatle who is responsible for the dry port said the global freight dynamics were constantly changing hence the need to develop and keep up with demand.
He said Botswana’s dry port currently sitting on a 36 233m2 of land was undergoing development to improve capacity.
Mr Mokgatle highlighted that dry ports were a crucial part of the supply chain network which played a vital role in a country’s growth and development as well as contributing to economic and trade relations across the world.
“We are currently building a 5 000m2 warehouse to be able to handle and store copper and other high value commodities,” said Mr Mokgatle.
He noted that the expansion came soon after the construction of an enclosed 3 000 square metre warehouse, which was commissioned in December 2020.
“Since then we have been able to handle large parcels. The largest that we have handled so far was sugar from Brazil destined to Botswana,” said Mr Mokgatle, further stating that a reefer station with 48 plug in points was developed to plug in refrigerated containers, to diversify the port’s capacity to handle perishable cargo such as medical drugs, fish, chicken, and beef.
He said they were working on doubling capacity to keep up with demand.
Mr Mokgatle said cargo volumes were increasing as they handled goods destined for Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia as well as containers on transit to Botswana.
He said they continued to build cordial relations with other ports, to ensure swift flow of freight.
“We are not restricted to handling Botswana cargo only. We complement each other as dry ports,” said Mr Mokgatle.
Meanwhile, he said plans were underway to open a satellite office for business development in Gaborone, which would serve clients in Botswana whose products were destined for Walvis Bay Corridor.
Their main target, he said was to facilitate for cargo to be shipped by end-consumers, adding that a dry port was an important distribution node as such the new development would efficiently help Batswana move goods internationally as well as serve those moving goods from other countries to Botswana.
“We are currently handling manganese from Namibia destined to China. We are expanding because we want to be able to comfortably handle high capacity cargo,” he said.
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