Feasibility study on a dedicated cacao terminal in Abidjan, Ivory Coast

Abstract

This study investigates the possibilities of the development of a dedicated cacaoterminal in the port of Abidjan, Ivory Coast.The port of Abidjan is the most important port in West Africa. The port handles about 15 million tons of cargo a year. One of the main export products is cacao. The developments in the cacao industry are mainly dictated by the biggest importer of cacao, the Port of Amsterdam. As a supplier Abidjan has to follow the developments in order to deliver the cacao according to the client's requirements. The last ten years represented a shift in the cacao shipping. While in former days the cacao was transported as general cargo, in gunnysacks on pallets, nowadays it is also possible to transport the cacao as bulk good (bulk containers or megabulk). This study consists of two parts. The first part investigates how the Port of Abidjan can seize up on to these developments and which port facilities are necessary for a dedicated cacao terminal. As cacao is a seasonal good, the cacao throughput varies throughout the year. In order to create a sufficient return on investment this variation is an important factor. The quality preservation of the cacao beans during the whole transport chain is very important. Criteria as moisture, sweat (precipitation of moisture on beans during shipping) broken beans and heating, what can cause fire, are of importance. The second part investigates the accessibility through the "Canal de Virdi", which all entering in the port ships have to pass.In order to receive the larger vessels nautical adjustments to the present port entrance are necessary. Some rigorous alternatives to increase the accessibility of the channel were proposed. It concerned alternatives that provide unconditional entrance for the above mentioned vessels. For this purpose it is proposed to replace the entire eastern breakwater in order to broaden the entrance. This is a very rigorous and expensive solution. Besides the alternatives disregard the special design of the channel mouth. It was designed to avoid the formation of a sand bar near the entrance. The shape of the entrance was specially studied for at one hand to create a maximal flushing effect of the channel and on the other hand to maintain a prevailing ebb current over the flood current. HASKONING has studied the issue and has proposed a low cost solution, which keeps the channel mouth itself unimpaired but creates a manoeuvring space directly inside the channel. The navigability should be improved, as ships will have more space and time after the narrow entrance to adjust their course and get in line with the channel's axis.