Cape Town Harbour Expansion - Deepening of Berths

Deepening of 4 working berths in the Cape Town Port, as they cannot meet the safe depth requirements of the new generation of container ships coming in fully-loaded. One of the dock’s berths is 12,8m deep and the other three are 14m deep. There are also three other 10,4m deep berths in the Ben Schoeman dock. The new ships require depths of greater than 14m and thus cannot dock fully-loaded with the present berth depths. This requires the Port of Cape Town to deepen its berths in order to remain in the international arena. Deepening will not occur along the present quay face as this will make it unstable. The NPA is thus proposing the quay wall be extended by 10m and then the entire dock will be deepened. This involves the removal of 1 million cubic metres of material. This material is unsuitable to use in the expansion of the terminal; it will be disposed of at a marine site that has already been chosen and environmentally assessed. The port upgrade will cost R4,2 billion and forms part of Transnet's R28 billion investment in port-related projects, from an overall R78 billion.