Buenos Aires port expansion 2020

Abstract

Economic outlook and capacity of the port The port of Buenos Aires has known a large growth of container throughputs in the last few years: in 1991 233,000 TEU were handled, in 1995638,000 and in 1998 over 1.1 million TEU were handled by the container terminals in Puerto Nuevo and Dock Sud. The end of this growth is not expected soon and various growth scenarios result in a throughput range of 4.2 to 6.6 million TEU in 2020. The current capacity of the port amounts approximately 2.0 million TEU, which is sufficient to operate till 2004 - 2005. To meet the future throughput demands, the capacity of the port must be increased. There is no space for new terminals in the existing port and the capacity can be increased either by building new terminals or by reorganisation of the old container terminals. This study is restricted to a port expansion, where new terminals are constructed on reclaimed land in the Rio de la Plata, although reorganisation of existing terminals can be beneficial in technical and operational aspects. The port of Buenos Aires will have to deal with more and larger ships in the future and the existing port is badly equipped to do so because: - the Rio de la Plata is shallow and access to the port is by means of a long dredged access channel with insufficient depth for large deep draft ships - the basins in the port are shallow and narrow - quays are bended and curved Aim of this study The main goal of this study is to design a modern, safe and efficient port expansion, which has the necessary capacity to handle the containers coming to Buenos Aires within the next 20 years. Besides that, the downtime of the container terminals is calculated, a possible construction phasing is determined, a cost estimate is made and the feasibility of the project is analysed. Design of port expansion A port expansion has been designed to meet future capacity demands, when a medium growth scenario is adopted (5.7 million TEU in 2020). In the chosen design, presented in the figure below, container ships will berth at both sides of an artificial peninsula. The old port will remain sheltered, but the new terminals on the eastern side of the peninsula unprotected and directly exposed to wind, waves and currents.