The new Terminal Porte Oceane (TPO) container facility at the port of Le Havre has welcomed its first vessel - the Taasinge Maersk.
The terminal, a joint venture between by the Perrigault company, part of Terminaux de Normandie, and APM Terminals, has a traffic target of 370,000 TEUs in its first year.
TPO is situated in Le Havre's Port 2000 and has two 350m berths with the option to add a third at a later stage.
The terminal has four post-panamax ZPMC gantry cranes and a large yard with 468 reefer plugs.
During the Taasinge's call, import and export boxes totalling 300 TEUs were handled by the first two gantry cranes. The remaining two are expected to come onstream before the end of the year.
Six more berths will be completed between autumn 2009 and spring 2010. They will be divided between the two existing operators and a third group run by Terminaux de Normandie and MSC.
Last year, the port of Le Havre handled 2.13 million TEUs.
Port 2000 is part of a port authority project to double its capacity to five million TEUs in the next five years.
The Taasinge operates on the WAF6 service, which connects Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, on the west African coast to Europe.
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