Another Terminal of Incheon New Port Opens to Accommodate Up to 12,000 TEU Vessel

HanJin Incheon Container Terminal (HJIT), the second container terminal of Incheon New Port, has opened on March 18.

The Incheon Port Authority (IPA) announced that HJIT started its operation with HANJIN MEXICO calling at the Incheon New Port at 2:00pm on March 18. The ship of HanJin Shipping, which was the first-calling-vessel at HIJT, will provide Korea-Philippines-Indonesia (KPI) services, which cover Korea (IncheonㆍBusan), China, Singapore, and Indonesia, starting from Manila in Philippines on a weekly basis. Up to now, HJIT has secured four routes connecting South Korea, China and Southeast Asia which is the biggest belt of industrial production and consumption.   

HJIT has prepared the opening since its completing the phase L-1 superstructure work of the Incheon New Port container terminal, of which linear quay length and size is 800m and 478,571㎡, respectively, including installations of cranes, operation building, and other operating facilities on the quay and yards of the container terminal.

HJIT is currently equipped with five Rail Mounted Quayside Cranes (RMQC) which can handle 22 container rows, a container terminal yard with seven rows, and 14 Automated Rail Mount Gantry Cranes (ARMGC) enabling the treatment of five-tiered and nine rows. In addition, 11 buildings including a monitoring and operation building with the operating system and terminal operation equipment are completely furnished.

The opening of HJIT means that the nine-year-construction project of Incheon New Port, which started from 2007, has been completed and the actual operation of the new port has started. HJIT will be contributing greatly to the operation of Incheon New Port along with the SunKwang New Container Terminal (SNCT) which opened in June last year.

Before the construction of the new port, Incheon Port ranked 60th in the world in terms of accommodation capacity, which could handle just the maximum 4,000 TEU class vessels. However, things will be quite different from now on. Incheon Port Authority has an ambitious plan to accomplish a handling capacity of 4.5M TEU by 2025 and jump up to the 30th in the world.  

In particular, due to the opening of HJIT, large container vessels with the loading capacity of  12,000TEU at once can come in and depart from Incheon Port. Since last year, Incheon New Port has been providing transpacific line services connecting Seoul Metropolitan Area to North America. Last year, IPA attracted 6800TEU class vessel fleet to the SNCT.

Yoo Chang Keun, president of IPA, said, “The opening of HJIT signals that the era of Incheon New Port has begun in earnest, adding, "We will be sure to achieve our annual target 2.5M TEU by vitalizing Incheon New Port and HJIT."

IPA was established in 2005 as a state-run company to develop and operate port facilities and logistics centers in the Incheon region more efficiently.

Since its establishment, IPA has made every effort to enhance the role of Incheon port as one of the global hubs in the East Asia, while launching three major projects to meet the requirements for the role as follows:

1. Construction of a score of deep sea container terminals with 16 meters draft deep enough to accommodate 13,000TEU ships by 2017. Some part of the port facilities, which will be in operation from June 2015 with constant draft of 14 meters, will help Incheon port be connected to the major ports in America, Europe and the other continents with direct entries of up to 8,000 TEU ships.

 2. Construction of the Incheon New Passenger Terminal to accommodate 150,000 DWT cruise ships by 2017. The construction project includes the development of Multi-functional Resort Complex which comprises shopping malls, entertainment centers and resort & leisure facilities.

3. Development of logistics parks as large as 6,113,000㎡ by 2030 to support the activities of the sea port and Incheon Airport and to be the most ideal logistics centers for global logistics companies for their accessibility to megacities and ports in Korea and Northern China.

 For more information, visit IPA on http://www.icpa.or.kr

or contact IPA Hong Kong office +852-2811-1741, icpahk@biznetvigator.com