The Ministry of Ocean and Fisheries of South Korea in co-operation with the Busan Port Authority (BPA) announces a long-term vision and strategy plan to develop Busan Port into a global trans-shipment hub port.

The last few years records show trans-shipment cargo at the Busan Port has grown by 10% (average) year-on-year while local cargo has increased by 4.2%.

Trans-shipment activities in 2014 overtook local cargo operations for the first time in the port’s history with trans-shipment accounting for 50.5% or 9.43 million TEUs up from 31.7% in 2000.

Taking into account the results of the recent years, the Korean government and BPA are implementing concrete plans to consolidate and strengthen Busan’s position as a global trans-shipment hub. Phase One of the project is to integrate container handling activities currently undertaken at North Port and New Port into a single New Port location.

South Korea unveils plans to create major trans-shipment port at Busan

Image: busan.go.kr

By the end of 2020, according to the plan, will be created eight new berths at New Port, which will add a further capacity of 6.21 millions TEUs.
A feasibility study will investigate additional expansion to the western container terminal at New Port. In order to serve the feeder network within the port, a feeder terminal for intra-Asian carriers will be created too.

The current program of dredging to a depth of 17m, which meets the demands for ever-growing container ships will be completed ahead of schedule in March 2017.

By 2019, Todo Island, which is currently situated in the port entrance will be removed, also the port entrance will be expanded by the end of 2018.
The installation of state-of-the-art, power-efficient container cranes and transfer cranes in the new facilities and the existing yard tractors will be switched from oil power to electricity, which is believed to lead to a 42 % reduction of CO2 emissions.

The current multi-purpose terminal sited between the north and south container terminals will be replaced by a yard tractor shuttle road and storage area in order to be achieved efficiency in the transfer of trans-shipment containers.

The multi-purpose terminal will be in a different location. A new port-wide ITT platform will control all container movements. To generate economies of scale and to facilitate these new arrangements, the four existing terminal operators at North Terminal will form a new unified joint venture company with BPA taking a shareholding.

When all the container handling is integrated at the New Port of Busan, the North Port will have an opportunity for development, becoming a new maritime cluster accommodating maritime manufacturing, marinas, cruise terminals and other facilities.