ENG-1992 — Page 290

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PORT DEVELOPMENT

HONG KONG'S port already handles more containers a year than the whole of Britain. Only the USA and Japan have a bigger container throughput than Hong Kong.

Each year, between now and the year 2011, Hong Kong must increase its handling capacity by one million containers. That is the equivalent of building every year a port the size of Oakland, California, or Felixstowe, Britain's busiest container port.

To handle this huge rise in throughput the territory will build a completely new port on the north-east of Lantau Island. This will involve one of the world's biggest civil engineering projects.

Plans call for the completion of 17 new container berths at Lantau. Hong Kong's present container port at Kwai Chung has 14 berths with another eight to be built by 1995.

Container berths are not the only facilities needed. The new port will need back-up and cargo working areas, ship-repair facilities, a river trade terminal to handle vessels from China and an extensive road network including an expressway. Eventually a link, by tunnel or bridge, will connect Lantau directly with Hong Kong Island. New channels must be dredged to provide marine access and breakwaters constructed to shelter working container vessels from wave action.

Like Kwai Chung, the new port will not just serve Hong Kong which owes its very existence to its position as an entrepôt for China. With the modernisation of China's economy and its opening up to world markets, that entrepôt trade has assumed a renewed importance.

Many of the goods transhipped to and from China through Hong Kong move by river boats down the Pearl River, for generations the gateway to trade with China. To cater specifically for this private companies will build and operate a River Trade Terminal at Tuen Mun on the mainland north of Lantau.

The new port cannot begin to operate until 1997, when the Lantau Fixed Crossing, one of the world's longest suspension bridges, comes into operation. The bridge will provide transport access to both the new port and the new airport at Chek Lap Kok.

Hong Kong may have to wait until 1997 for its new facilities on Lantau, but meanwhile the port must handle ever increasing amounts of cargo. Clearly port operators cannot wait for the new facilities on Lantau to commence work. To cope with increasing demand two new container terminals will come into operation close to the present container port. Lack of space at Kwai Chung means these will be sited at Stonecutters Island (Terminal 8) and at South-East Tsing Yi Island (Terminal 9).

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