As part of the revamp of the Suez Canal, a new side channel costing some $60m will be build around East Port Said allowing ships to call at the port 24 hours a day, rather than the current eight, and relieving some of the bottleneck at the canal’s Mediterranean entrance.
East Port Said is where APM Terminals runs the Suez Canal Container Terminal (SCCT). The new 9.5km long and 18.5 m deep side channel follows on from the unveiling on August 6 of the new Suez Canal channel, a 72 km waterway built alongside the existing canal, which will ships to transit in both directions at the same time for the first time, thus massively ramping up capacity at the Middle Eastern nexus.
