The Port of Antwerp announced that it will soon welcome the first container ship to call the brand new container terminal at the port of Kribi (Cameroon). CMA CGM Lapis will load in Antwerp early February at the Antwerp Container Terminal and has an ETA in Kribi around 7th March.
CMA CGM is a partner of the French-Chinese consortium operating the Kribi Container Terminal, therefore they were expected to be the ones to initiate a direct service to Kribi, together with their partner NileDutch. Kribi will be added to the joint service of CMA CGM and NileDutch, the ‘EURAF 5/WEWA’ service, that represents one of their loops between North Europe and West Africa.
After having loaded in Antwerp, the vessel will continue to Le Havre, Lissabon and Algeciras and will then head to Pointe Noire and Luanda. Kribi is being scheduled after the Luanda call. The vessel will then proceed to Douala and Abidjan, before returning back to Europe.
The port of Kribi is located approximately 150km south of Douala. This port crucial for Benin, handling an annual freight volume of around 12 million tonnes.
The government of Cameroon launched a project to build a deep-water port with an associated industrial zone on a 26,000 hectare site near Kribi, to be known as the Kribi Port and Industrial Complex. Port of Antwerp International (PAI), the consultancy and investment subsidiary of Antwerp Port Authority, has been appointed by the Council of Ministers of the West African country of Benin to modernise the port, under an agreement signed in early January.
Cameroon has a diversified economy, with considerable import and export flows and important potential volumes that Antwerp is still able to tap into. The port of Douala a very important operating base for cocoa beans, fruit and wood.