The Port of Lüderitz
The Port of Lüderitz is located 254 nautical miles south of the Port of Walvis Bay. The multi-purpose port handles mostly dry bulk cargo from southern Namibia and South Africa’s Northern Cape Province. The port serves the fishing industry and provides a base for offshore mining and southern coast oil and gas operations. The port comprises 25 hectares of land and is situated at Robert Harbour. While the current port land is nearly fully occupied, optimising existing land will create additional capacity in the short to medium term. Over the longer term, a new port is planned at Angra Point in Lüderitz with 886 hectares of additional land. The port’s 500-metre-long main berth has a depth of 8.75 metres. It is considered a shallow port, and it is founded on bedrock which is not financially viable to dredge. There are, however, plans to extend this quay wall in the near future to cater for short-term demand.
A study was commissioned in 2010 to explore how the port should expand in the short, medium and long term. To date, all short and medium-term plans from that master plan study have been implemented. There is an option of developing a new port in the bay adjacent to Robert Harbour at Angra Point. This new port would have a water depth of 14 to 16 metres to accommodate deeper draught vessels.
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