Focus on Sapangar Bay Port Hub — FSI
KOTA KINABALU: The Federation of Sabah Industries (FSI) wants to reason with the new Sabah Government to focus on prioritising expanding Sapangar Bay Port as the main hub port for Sabah, as it is situated next to the Kota Kinabalu Industrial Park.
FSI President Datuk Mohd Basri Abdul Gafar said, “We need to address the immediate need of industries and businesses here. Planning and building a new deep sea port in Kudat does not immediately help to expand operations as well as in securing trans-shipment and international bound cargo at this point in time.”
Basri was responding to Agriculture and Food Industry Minister Junz Wong’s media report that Sabah is to build a big Kudat deep sea port as one of the state’s prioritized mega projects under the Warisan-led Sabah government to enable giant main line operators’ ships to dock to load and offload cargoes and be able to handle ship repair (with a dry dock).
It was reported that at a recent thanksgiving and breaking of fast ceremony with Tanjung Aru voters, Wong said that the state government wanted to solve the ship load factor problem of not having enough manufactured goods to ship in and out of Sabah.
The minister said the manufacturing industry must be further developed in order to attract the main shipping liners to call at Sabah’s ports to and fro their countries of origin with viable profitable load factors.
Wong also revealed that another priority would be the extension of the railway track from Tanjung Aru to Kudat aimed at reducing the costs of logistics and business to lower the costs of living that will benefit Sabahans.
Basri opined that the development of a deep sea port in Kudat involves long-term planning and time consuming construction to achieve its objective of having a container terminal and progressively building its capacity to expand operations on a global scale, specifically in securing transshipment and international bound cargo. Cruise ship tourism to the Tip of Borneo and other attractions may help the economy there.
“We already have another container port at POIC in Lahad Datu, ready to serve palm oil and other commodities downstream processing industries for the East Coast of Sabah,” he said, adding that he would lead a FSI delegation to pay a courtesy call on the Chief Minister and other state ministers soon.
He urged the government to focus first on ensuring the success of the ‘Hub of the Far East’ port expansion at Sapangar Bay in order to attract main line operators to consider it as one of their berthing points.
He noted that Sapangar Bay Port was reported to be among new ports in Malaysia and China which are now part of the China-Malaysia Port Alliance, according to former Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai.
The ports, namely Jing Tang Port and Tianjin Port in China, and Kemaman, Sapangar Bay and Kuching Ports, are part of the alliance aimed at enhancing cooperation in various disciplines, including port studies, training and apprenticeship, technical assistance, exchange of information, traffic development and promotion of trade services between the ports.
An objective of the alliance was to facilitate trade using ports in Malaysia and China as the gateway, and DP World which is a leading enabler of global trade and an integral part of the supply chain related businesses – from marine and inland terminals, maritime services, logistics and ancillary services to technologydriven trade solutions, is developing its Tianjin Port terminal in China, and is also looking at Sapangar Bay Port’s potential, after establishing ties at ports in Manila, Surabaya and Ho Chi Minh City.
Reportedly, container handling is DP World’s core business and generates more than three quarters of its revenue. In 2017, DP World handled 70 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) with the current gross capacity of 88 million TEU and is expected to rise to more than 100 million TEU by 2020, in line with market demand.
It was understood that because of this interest, Suria Capital Holdings Bhd, a company controlled by the Sabah state government, has dropped its plan to sell a stake in wholly-owned subsidiary Sabah Ports Sdn Bhd (SPSB) to MMC Corp Bhd.
SPSB operates Sapangar Bay Container Port, Sapangar Bay Oil Terminal, Kota Kinabalu Port, Sandakan Port, Tawau Port, Lahad Datu Port, Kunak Port and Kudat Port.
The types of cargo being handled include container, dry bulk, general cargo and liquid cargo, especially palm oil and petroleum.
Basri supports moves to revive the barter trade using Tawau as a BIMP-EAGA port, particularly with Tarakan and other parts of Kalimantan.
Suria Capital Holdings Bhd was reported to be expanding its cargo operation at the Sapangar Bay Container Port as part of the group’s plan to relocate its general cargo terminal from its limited space at the Kota Kinabalu Port.
The repositioning exercise and the construction of the new facility are expected to take three years to complete as an expansion of a new general cargo facility will be built at the Sapangar Bay Container Port which is expected to start its physical construction works in 2019.
In view of funding issues, Basri said it is vital that the expansion of the Sapangar Bay Container Terminal serves to realise the port’s priority aim to be the trans-shipment hub to serve East Asean Growth Area that covers Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Phili