Hutchison’s IPS terminal in Dammam ramps up productivity

DAMMAM, Saudi ArabiaI— International Ports Services (IPS) in King Abdul Aziz Port handled over 600,000 TEU in the first four months of the year, a year-over-year increase of 16 percent. The growth in volume has been attributed to the increase in trade activities in the Kingdom and IPS’s capacity to move containers more efficiently, according to a release by IPS parent Hutchison Port Holdings.“We managed to break our own record by clocking 170 moves per hour when handling the OOCL Europe in April, with 4,000 moves across six quay cranes and an average of 32 moves per quay crane/hour,” said Nasser Saif, head of operations at IPS.He said the terminal would continue to pursue a better performance as it implemented a series of operations enhancement programmes.IPS has invested more than $100 million over the last two years, purchasing three new semi-automated remote controlled quay cranes, 15 rubber-tyred gantry cranes, 77 terminal tractors and expanding its yard by 15 percent to 116 hectares to ensure it can handle growing cargo volumes with speed and efficiency. In 2014, IPS handled its 17 millionth TEU in since the start of the concession in 1997. It also broke its own records with the handling of 163,000 TEU in a single month and 61 vessel calls in a month, including the MSC Ivanna, the largest vessel ever to call at the Port of Dammam. IPS is in the process of preparing an operating system upgrade to ensure compatibility with the most advance container handling technology.