Preparations for breaking ground for construction of the Van Phong International Transit Port in Khanh Hoa Province are complete, Le Trieu Thanh, deputy general director of Vietnam National Shipping Lines, said.
The work, scheduled to begin in late October, will see construction of two deep-sea ports at Dam Mon in Van Phong Bay, which can handle container ships with a capacity of 9,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEU).
Vietnam National Shipping Lines, or Vinalines, which has been licensed to build the first phase, will invest VND1 trillion (US$55.5 million).
The port has been designed by Japan’s Nippon Koei and Vietnam’s Port Coast.
The Government’s master plan for seaports for the period through 2020 has Van Phong Bay as the only site for an international transshipment port.
The project was originally set to get under way in January 2008 but was delayed due to a dispute with South Korea’s Posco steel group, which wanted to build a steel complex at Dam Mon.
Under the master plan, the Van Phong complex will cover 765 hectares and be divided into two sections comprising oil ports and multi-purpose ports.
Planned to be fully complete at the end of 2020, the port complex will cost around US$3.6 billion to be brought in by domestic and international port developers, and contain 37 large piers and six small ones that will handle a total of 17 million TEUs annually to become one of the largest ports in Asia.
