Port of Buenos Aires Expansion to Include Dredging (Argentina)

General Ports Administration, state company running the port of Buenos Aires has inked a contract to adapt the port to cope with the dominant new generation of giant ships, reports buenosairesherald.

AGP aims to spend US$700 million to adapt the port of Buenos Aires to the Panama Canal parameters.

The plans to upgrade the port over the next two to five years include permanent dredging of the entire port area.

“Buenos Aires — which requires permanent dredging — and the rest of the ports of the Metropolitan Area (Dock Sud, in Avellaneda, in Greater Buenos Aires) and La Plata (the capital of Buenos Aires province), must adapt to receive the ships forming an itinerary with the ports of Uruguay and Brazil. Different from bulk cargo ships, container vessels call in different ports as if they were cruisers. If the whole itinerary has a draft of 40 feet, the port having less than that is left out,” says merchant navy captain Sergio Borrelli, the trustee of the General Ports Administration (AGP) authority.

This preliminary contract requires the final approval from the administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

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Dredging Today Staff, February 24, 2014