The Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) together with the Managing Director of Mediterranean Shipping Company Ghana Ltd (MSC) on Tuesday 22^nd November 2022 paid a courtesy call on the Management of Meridian Port Services Ltd (MPS). The visit was to enable the CEO of GIPC appraise the investment undertaken by MPS.

The delegation was received by the Senior Management Team led by the Chief Executive Officer of MPS, Mr. Mohamed Samara. The CEO took them through a presentation detailing the extensive construction of West Africa’s most efficient Port. Following the presentation, the team was taken on a tour through the terminal to witness real time operations.

Mr. Yofi Grant, the CEO of GIPC Highlighting Ghana’s investment potentials in a statement remarked.

“This is a truly remarkable investment. I have been to a few ports around the world, and I must say, this is certainly something in its own class in Africa. I have not seen a port of this magnitude in my travels. This is the kind of investment that the GIPC encourages, and we look forward to fully establishing Ghana as the gateway to Africa leading in trade and investment.”

Mr. Samara demonstrated how MPS has embraced technology and smoothly integrated the port operations among all stakeholders. The CEO of GIPC further articulated that the nation being on a digitalisation drive in all sectors with a Port like this further enhances Ghana’s investment profile and expressed his admiration with MPS’ leap straight into the digital age.

Mr. Peter Ehrenreich, the Managing Director of MSC Ghana on his part called for better collaboration amongst the relevant stakeholders to do away with bottlenecks in the maritime trade.

“MPS’ investment in the Tema Port expansion and the implementation of technologies at Terminal 3 certainly illustrated how drastically positive the port developments have been in Ghana and how we are far ahead of many competing nations. We do have other bureaucratic obstacles to deal with to be truly “trade friendly” and promote Ghana further, and we must all work on improving those going forward”

The tour at MPS Terminal 3 included a stop at Berth 19 to go onboard the largest vessel that calls at West African Ports. MSC Daniela is the lead ship of her class of container ship operated by the Mediterranean Shipping Company “MSC” that at 366 metres long (1,200 ft 9 in) with a Beam 51m is one of the large container ships of the world, with a twenty-foot equivalent unit TEU cargo capacity of 14,000 containers.

She, MSC Daniela, arrived at MPS Terminal 3 with a draft at 15.9m deep to discharge and load the total of 3,012 TEU’s which were performed in 2,145 shore crane moves.

The captain, first time in Tema-Ghana, applauded the beautiful MPS Terminal 3 as well as the crane productivity. He, with some of his 20 crew members onboard, took the delegation to the vessel bridge and demonstrated the advanced technologies and monitoring tools on the vessel.

The vessel was stowed by the MSC vessel planners to be operated with 4 Ship-To-Shore gantry cranes which MPS deployed accordingly. The CEO of GIPC and the Managing Director of MSC Ghana witnessed few hours of the remarkable OPS execution where operations were completed in 1,324 minutes at the net rate of 97.21 moves per hour with an average net crane productivity of 36.7 moves per hour.

For the records, the best crane productivity was recorded on STS # 17 by James Agbleke and Nathaniel Odonkor performing 325 moves in 423 minutes mounting to 46.1 moves per hour. Next best crane productivity was on STS # 15 by Abdull Sallam, Sampson Otubuah, Gabriel Agbobli and Mohamed Dermane making 722 moves with 33.2 moves per hour.

Over the years, the Shareholders of MPS have considerably invested in the Tema Port Infrastructure, Superstructure, Technology and Human Resource development. Through these investments, MPS transformed the Tema Port into one of the most competitive ports in West and Central Africa and managed to significantly reduce the transports costs for importers, exporters, shipping lines and all other port stakeholders.

In the past 5 years, MPS has led the Tema Port in a never experienced transformation of Port Operations and Management. Its highly efficient Container Terminal- MPS Terminal 3 is a sophisticated port facility well-heeled with technology and some of the world’s most advanced equipment, systems, and digital processes.