The President of the Valencia Port Authority (Autoridad Portuaria de Valencia, APV) Aurelio Martinez disclosed last week the details of the Northern Terminal, a new automated container facility at Valencia of the future. The announcement was made after the APV Board of Directors had approved the EUR 1,200 mln mega-project of the port’s expansion.

Today, the port hosts three container terminals: Noatum Terminal (1,450,000 sq.m.), MSC Valencia Terminal (337,000 sq.m.) and APM Terminal (450,000 sq.m.).

The fourth container terminal of the Valencia port will boast the area of 1,382,000 sq.m., the quay line of 1,970m, with the draft of 20m near the berth as well as in all the basin, whereas the access channel will be 22.5m deep. The capacity of the Northern Terminal will be 5 mln TEU.

“This investment and this development will change completely the port of Valencia. Its capacity will expand from today’s 7.5 mln TEU to 12.5 mln TEU,” said Aurelio Martinez.

This will place Valencia up among the three largest European container ports, following Rotterdam and Hamburg. Currently, Valencia is the major Spanish container port, having recently overtaken Algeciras, and #5 in Europe.

Its traffic in January-September 2018 increased by 4.54% y-o-y, up to 3.8 mln TEU, whereas Algeciras handled 3.58 mln TEU.

According to Ramon Gomez Ferrer, APV Strategy and Innovation Director, Algeciras, Barcelona, Rotterdam and Antwerp will serve as points of reference for Valencia in the construction of the fourth terminal, as these ports have a high level of automatization and port infrastructure.

The new terminal will have a road and rail connectivity and will be linked to the access tunnel, which will go under the seabed, which will require the investment of EUR 400 mln.

The construction and operation contract for the new terminal is expected to be awarded in July 2019.