Oriental Port and Allied Services Corp. (OPASCOR) will soon construct a P170 million (US$ 3.9 million) bulk cargo handling facility at the Cebu International Port(CIP).
OPASCOR President and general manager Tomas A. Riveral said this is a major capitalization of his company in the last 16 years. OPASCOR, an exclusive cargo handling service provider at the CIP, has a existing contract with the Cebu Port Authority (CPA), which is valid until 2013. It has partnered with Banco de Oro/PCI/Equitable Bank to improve its operation.
The bank will finance the acquisition of bulk cargo handling equipment in the amount of P100 million, while OPASCOR will shoulder the infrastructure in the amount of P70 million. Riveral said it will take a long time to recover the cost but the project will a be a big contribution to bulk cargo handling service in Cebu where bulk cargoes have diminished gradually over the past 20 years.
He said there was almost no bulk cargo in Cebu in 2000 because trader used the ports of Batangas and Bataan, which have a facility. Most bulk cargos that can be accommodated by this future facility are rice, corn, wheat, monggo, animal feed, among others. Under the new facility, the bulk cargo will be siphoned be the pipes from the vessel to the warehouse. The target date of completion of the facility will be in March 2008.
CPA general manager Angelo Verdan said the facility will be located beside the Mahiga Creek, the boundary of the cities of Mandaue and Cebu, so the other firms will not be disturbed during operation.
Verdan said that once OPASCOR finishes the project, CPA will construct a concrete fence that will separate and divide CIP from the domestic port in order to effectively sustain compliance of the International Standard for Port Facility Security Code. CPA Commissioner Carlos Co said the CPA planned to set up a bulk handling facility at the Ludo and Luym Port in Ermita, Cebu City, but his did not materialize due to lack of road-right-of-way.
Co, a past president of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the present bulk cargo handling system takes too much time because arrastre worker first bag the good in the vessel and load these to waiting trucks. He said it takes three days to unload a vessel of rice, corn or monggo. But under bulk cargo handling, it will only take less than a day.
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