Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto officially inaugurated Tuxpan Port Terminal (PTP) last Thursday.
The President was accompanied by Fernando Chico Pardo, stakeholder in Seattle-based Carrix whose subsidiary SSA International operates PTP, provincial personalities and the state-owned oil Pemex officials.
The ceremony coincided with the opening of traffic between Tuxpan and the port of Tampa, Florida, with the regional shipping company Transgulf, through a weekly connection of 2.5 days, and with the Japanese Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL), as part of the itinerary between Galveston bound for Antwerp, Belgium, to transport automobiles.
“Mazda has been exporting automobiles on MOL PCC’s from Tuxpan to Antwerp since January this year. The quality of the product handling at TPT, lack of congestion, abundance of land, and the short distance from the Bajio region where most automobiles are produced are the main factors driving the shift of the car market from Veracruz to Tuxpan,” said TPT general manager John Bressi.
In addition, SSA Mexico and Pemex have signed a MoU to develop an off-loading position for Pemex at TPT that will complement Pemex existing off-load facilities.
According to the most recent business plan of Pemex, the operational capacity of Tuxpan is to be raised to 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) from 85, 000 (bpd) of products. Pemex-Tuxpan port with SSA Mexico could boost gasoline and distillates imports,
The $375m-710,000-teu terminal was the first automated port to begin operations in Mexico last July with CMA CGM Hammonia Venetia calling the terminal. Tuxpan Port Terminal (TPT) is a subsidiary of Seattle-based SSA International.
The port’s 556 m-long quay with a depth alongside of 15 metres makes it the only terminal on Mexico’s Gulf Coast able to receive neo-panamax vessels up to 14,000-teu.
Tuxpan is located on the Atlantic coast of Mexico, some 240 km from the capital city in between the ports of Vera Cruz and Altamira. The terminal will also be closer to El Bajio development centre, in the middle of the country, where are concentrated most of the automobile plants that will produce around 4m vehicles by 2017, the majority of them for exports.
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