Prime Meridian Docks Ghana Limited, a wholly Ghanaian Company, is set to build a modern ship repair and maintenance facility at the Takoradi Port.
The project comprises civil works and the procurement of a floating dry dock. The civil works involves the dredging of a pocket for the floating dock and the turning basin to-14m and -11m respectively, the construction of a jetty of 200 meters, a fitting-out quay facility that provides up to 400 meters of berthing space and the development of some 18,000 square meters of lay-down area and land-based workshop facility.
At the sod cutting of Prime Meridian Docks (PMD) Floating Dry Dock and Ship Maintenance Facility by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Managing Director of Prime Meridian Docks Limited, Stanley Ahorlu, recalled saying: “In 2014, we came to GPHA and said, we want to solve a problem and they asked, what the problem is? We realised that it was taking quite a lot on vessel owners of West Africa to service and maintain their ships and that all of them were leaving the West Coast of the Gulf of Guinea to Las Palmas Spain, Southern Africa, among others’.
According to him, it takes about 21 days to get to Las Palmas to repair a ship, and the cost is quite prohibitive, for the reason that the quality-of-service present along West Africa does not meet expectation of the ship owners.
He explained that the standard ship owners go to repair yards for three reasons; and these are, quality standards, price and proximity.
“So on the basis of this, we said to ourselves, there’s a market and we can provide a solution. The solution we came up with is a ship repair facility right back in Takoradi, which is quite frankly, a very central point to put a ship repair facility especially when it’s been positioned by government and the oil and gas services hub of West Africa,” he elaborated.
The answer, according to Mr. Ahorlu is simply to build a facility with a spec of 40,000 square meters of landing area.
“We are reclaiming the sea 40,000 square meters, a jetty of 250 meters. A 13,500-tonne lift capacity floating dry dock will be newly constructed and will be capable of servicing ships of 200 meters Length Overall (LOA)” he said.
He said it has taken PMD eight years to get to this level and when the project is complete, it would create 200 new jobs and about 300 casual jobs.
The facility, Mr. Ahorlu said, is projected to raise revenue of about U$14 million a year and this is a game changer for the region, the country as well as West Africa.
This phase of the project is estimated at US$137 million funded by PMD, private equity investors and development finance institutions. The shipyard facility is hoped-for to be operational in fourth quarter of 2024.
