The announcement is expected this Thursday: the management of the container terminal at the port of Beirut will be entrusted to CMA CGM, we learned from authorized sources.
Read also
The kings of freight emerge as big winners from the health crisis
The group led by the Franco-Lebanese Rodolphe Saadé is one of the two candidates to have responded to the call for tenders, launched in early 2020, but delayed due to the economic and political crises that are shaking Lebanon, as well as the gigantic explosion that occurred on August 4 of the same year.
The detonation of ammonium nitrate stocks caused 200 deaths, hundreds of injuries, including among the employees of the current terminal operator, and innumerable damages.
But the disaster had left
the sixteen cranes intact.
The latter are operating at a slower pace due to the sharp drop in imports caused by the collapse of the purchasing power of the Lebanese: the volume of containers has halved compared to 2019, to 700,000 TEU (sea freight unit which corresponds to a container 20 feet long, or about 6 meters) barely.
The smallness of the market, coupled with problems of Lebanese governance and, icing on the cake, payment conditions partly in Lebanese pounds, while the currency is far from being stabilized, seems to have discouraged the major international groups.
Read also
France and Saudi Arabia at the bedside of Lebanon
CMA CGM's only competitor was disqualified after examining the technical offers.
On the other hand, the Marseilles shipowner has continued to show its interest in Beirut and its CEO accompanied Emmanuel Macron to Lebanon in September 2020. In Lebanese political circles, it has been explicitly agreed since that
"the port will go to the French"
, according to various sources.
With this first contract in Beirut, pending the possible concession of the port itself, CMA CGM completes its establishment in the Eastern Mediterranean, where it already operates in the ports of Latakia, in Syria, and Tripoli, in northern Lebanon. .
