KARACHI: Pakistan International Bulk Terminal Ltd, (PIBT) and JV Consortium of Turkish firm M/s Siyahkaleem and a local firm Maqbool Associates signed a contract for civil works to construct the country’s first mechanized coal, cement and clinker terminal at Port Qasim, at a ceremony here Thursday. CEO PIBT, Sharique A Siddiqui and CEO JV Consortium of Turkish firm M/s Siyahkaleem and Maqbool Associates, Masood Shah inked the agreement. On the occasion, Chairman Marine Group of Companies, Captain, Haleem Siddiqui and chief guest, Chairman Port Qasim Authority, Vice Admiral Muhammad Shafi (Retd) witnessed the contract signing. It will be constructed as a state-of-the-art dirty bulk cargo handling facility at an estimated cost of $175 million at Port Qasim on build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis for a period of 30 years. The project is expected to become operational by 2015 with a capacity to handle up to 12 million tons per annum of coal, cement and clinker. The terminal’s jetty with a 15-meter draft would help berth larger ships of up to 75,000 DWT. The jetty’s length will be around 460 meters which would connect to the back area of 25 hectares with a 2.5 kilometre-long trestle bridge. The terminal is planned to have a dedicated storage of handling facilities for each type of cargo ie cement, coal clinker. The terminal will have five silos of 10,000 tons capacity each for cement storage. Chairman PQA, Vice Admiral Muhammad Shafi (Retd) said the proposed project was totally owned by local firm, hoping that the terminal would help country’s export increase. He said the proposed terminal remained idle till he assumed the charge of PQA as chairman and with the help of Federal Ports and Shipping Ministry it had been resurrected to develop a state-of-the-art facility at the country’s second largest seaport. He hoped the new terminal would be completed by 2014. Shafi said PQA had primarily been founded to satisfy the steel mills demands with supplies of raw material, and the PIBT would increase the availability of the cargo to the mills. He said the PQA’s navigational channel which was 45 kilometres long had been seen as “handicap” but since he took over the authority he tossed the idea to build shipping activities either side of the long stream to improve the seaport’s operations. Chairman Marine Group of Companies, Captain Haleem Siddiqui said the PIBT would be the country first private sector terminal to handle dirty cargo. He said the Ministry of Ports and Shipping had helped this project take off. He thanked all the stakeholders for their contributions to establish the terminal.