Tour d´EFFORTS

Today, on again a for the time of year exceptionally warm day, I visited Humberto Moyano of the Port of Gijon Port Authority, responsible for Knowledge Management and R&D activities.  Ana Gomez, a systems engineer from ISDEFE from Madrid had also come to meet me. After a discussion about the dissemination and the possibilities how he as leader of the SP 3 "Port Organisation" can contribute to the dissemination, he gave a very good introduction to the port and its plans for the future. The port is currently expanding the port area which will increase the port land surface by almost 50%. The construction is currently well under way and is planned to be finished 2010. The coal terminal will be moved to this new port area and in its old space a container terminal with 1 Mio TEU annual handling capacity will be built.

The theory

In the port processes lies the main interest of the Port of Gijon. Its goal is to become a 5th generation port which is oriented to the TEN network, has an intelligent transport system (VTMIS), facilitates collaborative logistics and provides state-of-the-art e-logistics services.

This requires a sound knowledge and research about how the current port processes have to be developed to achieve the above described goal.

The practice

After this theoretical introduction we went on a tour of the port to see the practical side of the port.

We started at the old customs house which is the only old building in the current port. 

The structure of the cargo that is handled becomes quickly very clear when looking at what is lying on the quays:

Iron ore for the Arcelor Mittal steel factory in Gijon

Coal for the Arcelor Mittal steel factory and for the 750 MW power plant in Gijon and other customers in Spain.

Another important export product is cement.

Then we came to the construction site of the new port. With these concrete "boxes", which can float, the breakwater in the

30 meter deep water is built up to 15 metres high above the sea, in total a wall of 45 meters height from the sea ground to the top level. The concrete boxes are made in the port, tugged to the site of

the wall and then flooded with water and positioned with GPS to bring them in the correct position. Afterwards they are filled with stones to stabilise them and to give them the strength to withstand the Atlantic storms.

Some of the main customers of the Port of Gijon, Arcelor Mittal steel factory, the power plant and the cement factory, are situated in a valley next to the port. The port and the valley are connected with a tunnel through which we went to see the factories.

The power plant

The cement factory

The valley protects the city well against the local emissions of these industries but is still close to the port so this situation serves well all interests.

So, now all ports have been visited and described and I will end my report here. I hope you enjoyed reading.

Good bye, Jan Prahm, TuTech Innovation GmbH, Hamburg

Labels: The ports visited

# posted by Jan Prahm @ 20:58