New CEO for Kingston container terminal
2018, February 1: Kingston Freeport Terminal Limited has reported upgrading 600 metres of berth and announced plans to acquire two new ship-to-shore cranes by April. This will bring total ship-shore gantries to 16.
KFTL, which dominates the real estate at Jamaica’s main port, handled approximately 1.47 million teu in calendar year 2017, about 80% of which was transshipment cargo. In the first seven months of last year, transshipment cargo through Kingston totalled 4.84 million metric tonnes.
Domestic cargo was 748,000 metric tonnes. Meanwhile, the new CEO, Johannes ‘Hans’ de Jong, who replaced Oliver Tretout, took up his new assignment in Kingston at the start of the year, pledging to reduce the time it takes to clear arriving domestic cargo. It now takes about 45 minutes, but the new CEO wants to get this down to 30 minutes.
The slow rate of cargo delivery brought words of protest from Jamaica’s Customs Brokers Association in 2017. KFTL’s new boss plans to fix this.[]
