The President of Puertos del Estado visits the Port of Algeciras

• Rodríguez Dapena and Gerardo Landaluce have held meetings with the Management Committee and the Employee Committee of the APBA, as well as with representatives of the Port Community and the Association of Major Industries of the Bay of Algeciras.
• The ETS, the situation of the closure to passengers of the border, and demands for railway improvements are the focus of the meetings.

February 17, 2022. The President of Puertos del Estado, Álvaro Rodríguez Dapena, made his first visit to the Port of Algeciras today since taking office last November. Until that time, Rodríguez Dapena was a member of the Board of Directors of the Bay of Algeciras Port Authority (APBA), so he is familiar with the reality, challenges, and objectives of the port in the Strait.

After holding various working meetings at the APBA offices, the President of Puertos del Estado, accompanied by the President and the General Manager of the APBA, Gerardo Landaluce and José Luis Hormaechea, respectively, moved to Isla Verde Exterior, where he visited the works of the 2nd Heavy Traffic Terminal (TTP) as well as the Fort of Isla Verde, a Cultural Interest Asset (BIC) that has undergone a comprehensive reform by the APBA, work that has been financed by the 1.5% Cultural program, the aid system of the Ministry of Transport for the conservation of the Spanish Historical Heritage. Regarding the TTP, which will provide the Port of Algeciras with an additional 542 parking spaces for trucks and semitrailers, the President of Puertos del Estado has analyzed with his counterpart in Algeciras the evolution of the Strait's traffic in recent years, which continues to grow at a double-digit rate, unaffected during the pandemic.

This terminal, as Landaluce explained, is a step in the materialization of the Hercules Plan, a set of initiatives aimed at promoting regional value chains and the development of commercial relations with the southern neighbor of the European Union through the Europe-Africa intercontinental bridge represented by the Port of Algeciras. "This Plan has, as its main axis, the Algeciras-Zaragoza railway highway that runs through the Central Branch of the Mediterranean and Atlantic corridors. Landaluce has insisted that the growth rate of activity between Algeciras and Tangier Med makes the execution of the projects that will allow its implementation in 2024 even more urgent.

The President of Puertos del Estado also visited the container terminals of APM Terminals Algeciras and the semi-automatic TTi Algeciras. The first is incorporating 12 new RTGs this week that will mean a leap in quality both technically and in terms of operator safety; while the second is in the midst of the process of raising 5 of its portainer cranes with the aim of operating with greater flexibility the 24,000 teus megamax of the Algeciras class.

After the visit to the facilities, the President of Puertos del Estado highlighted that "the nearly 300 million in public investment that the Bay of Algeciras Port Authority has planned for the 2021-25 period, to which private investments will be added, will allow us to continue advancing towards the complete, safe, and efficient intermodality of its facilities."

In the afternoon, Álvaro Rodríguez Dapena will attend the groundbreaking ceremony for the port-city project of the Maritime Lake of Algeciras, and will have another working meeting, this time with the representatives of the Port Community Association (COMPORT), AESBA, ATEIA, APEMAR, the Spanish shipping companies operating in the Strait, and the Association of Major Industries of the Bay of Algeciras (AGI), with whom he will address the problems that the closure of the maritime border with Morocco to passengers is generating for part of the business fabric of the Bay of Algeciras, and their concern about the incorporation, without the appropriate fair transition, of maritime transport into the emissions trading system (ETS).