Nearly six years after its future was in jeopardy, Waterford Port has embarked on an ambitious €50 million expansion programme. The first phase was completed this week with the formal handing over of a new gantry crane that will significantly enhance productivity at the Belview container terminal.
The Liebherr crane, manufactured in Killarney, Co Kerry has a clearance height of 34 metres, outreach capability of 37 metres and can lift up to 45 tonnes. It was shipped to Belview and constructed on the quayside.
Its importance to Belview is symbolic as well as practical. It was the collapse of two cranes in Waterford in October 1996 which raised fears about the port's future.
Recalling the "blackest day" in the port's history, the chairman of the Port of Waterford Company, Mr Ben Gavin, said he was "flabbergasted" when he received the news while returning from a weekend in Dublin.
"I will always remember the silence in the offices at Belview that day," he told guests at a function on Monday at which the new crane was formally handed over.
"People passed each other in the corridors and said nothing. Everyone was stunned," he said. Competitors wrote the port off and exporters and importers looked elsewhere. But after years of hard work the port was expanding, said Mr Gavin.
Planned developments include the construction of a roll-on roll-off berth, provision of a bulk liquids terminal and tank farm, extension of the container terminal and bulk berth, construction of additional transit stores, improvement in river access and re-location of the port headquarters to Belview.
The Minister of State for the Marine, Mr Hugh Byrne, said the port was one of the fastest growing in the State. "As the nearest major Irish port to mainland Europe, it is understandable why it has, since Viking times, played a key role in servicing traffic to the UK and continental Europe." With a throughput in 2001 of 2.1 million tonnes and turnover in 2000 of €3.997 million, an increase of 5.6 per cent on the previous year, the port had exciting plans for the future, he said.
"The development of the Belview facility is a testimony to the confidence of the Port of Waterford Company in the long-term future of the port," said Mr Byrne.