Port Master Plan for the Port of Beira, Mozambique

Abstract

The port of Beira is an essential driver for economic growth in Mozambique. Its location, with strong connections to the hinterland, creates a promising future for the further development of the port. The port authority requires a new port master plan in order to optimise throughput over available ground and (wet) infrastructure, and to extend its capacity in the coming decades. This report presents in structured way the development of a new port master plan for the Port of Beira. In Beira, waiting times are known to be very long and the port authorities have the desire to improve the port performance on this matter. Therefore a Harboursim model of the present situation of the Port of Beira is built, which is used to simulate the maritime traffic. For Beira Port, processes are added to the Harboursim model code to make a good representation of the reality. Furthermore, the Harboursim model is improved, by fixing errors in the model code. The adaptions made in the code are generally applicable for all future Harboursim models. This study is a case study for the ‘Adaptive Port Planning’ (APP) framework, which is an addition to the master plan development. Using the framework, differences in the robustness of the master plan alternatives are determined. Furthermore, the robustness of the chosen alternative is increased, because actions for dealing with the vulnerabilities and opportunities associated with each alternative are determined.