He said Timor would gain access to private capital, as well as advanced technology. Xanana GusmÃ£o, the Timorese minister of planning, stressed the benefits of a PPP procurement route when the contract was signed in June last year. It will be able to accommodate ships with a draft of 15m, deep enough for all but the largest container ships.Ī community meeting in Tibar to discuss the impact of the port () The port will have a 630m long dock, a 27ha container terminal, 11.6ha of offices and workshops and state-of-the-art equipment, including two ship-to-shore and five rubber-tyre gantry cranes.

These were led by Mota-Engil of Portugal, DP World of Dubai and International Container Terminal Services of the Philippines.

It beat three other teams to the contract. It will also arrange most of the capital investment, although the Timorese government will contribute $130m. The construction of a deepwater port at Tibar Bay, about 10km west of the capital of Dili, will be undertaken by Bolloré Ports, a division of the Brittany-based logistics giant Bolloré Group.īolloré will undertake the project on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis, and will design the build the port and operate it for 30 years once it is complete in 2020. After six years of planning and procurement, construction work officially started yesterday on a $490m scheme to build a port in poverty stricken Timor-Leste, a recently independent state in the Indonesian archipelago.

Deepwater container ship construction