Africa-Press – Namibia. Niël Terblanché History was made when Namibia exported 52 000 tonnes of raw iron ore from the Port of Walvis Bay on Friday. The iron ore was produced by Lodestone Namibia at its Dordabis Iron Ore Project mining site in the area of Windhoek.
The export of the raw material officially made Namibia an exporter of iron ore which would be refined overseas. The 52 000 tonnes of ore were transported from the mining site near the Namibian capital to Walvis Bay by trucks running non-stop for weeks. In the end, it took 1 300 truckloads to fill the consignment.
In the same week that the iron ore left Namibian shores the Namibian Ports Authority welcomed two giant container ships on their maiden call to the new container terminal in the Walvis Bay harbour.
The CMA CGM NABUCCO and the ULSAN docked last week and loaded and unloaded almost 1 500 containers. The 334-metre-long CMA CGM Nabucco and Ulsan with a keel length of 258 metres recorded a total of 492 and 1000 moves done on each vessel respectively.
According to Elias Mwenyo, the Commercial Services Executive of NamPort, the CMA CGM Nabucco which is headed to Singapore discharged import cargo and is expected to return to the Port of Walvis Bay in early September 2021.
Mwenyo said the next Port of call for Ulsan is Port Elizabeth in South Africa. He said that in the past four months ending July 2021, the Ports Authority recorded the docking of 265 vessels in Walvis Bay versus 239 dockings in the same period in 2020.
“This is a good improvement and is indicative of the fact that the Namibian Ports Authority continuously strives to attain its vision of becoming the port of choice for shipping lines delivering and taking cargo to and from Namibia and its landlocked neighbours. The Ports Authority’s investment in world-class equipment such as the construction of the New Container Terminal as well as the acquisition of the four state-of-the-art ship-to-shore cranes are yielding the desired results,” he said.
According to Mwenyo, the Namibian Ports Authority remains committed to its promise of providing world-class port services to all seaborne trade by offering excellent customer service to its clientele.
