It is a deep water site and strategically located as a transshipment hub for containers destined for the Black Sea via the Bosporus. The terminal will handle vessels carrying up to 18,000 TEU and will have an annual capacity of around 2 million TEU. The investors include Terminal Investment Ltd SA (TIL) and the Soyuer group in Turkey. The initiative for the development of the port was taken by Mr Ahmet Soyuer. TiL is the terminal operating subsidiary of Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), the world’s second largest shipping company.
Uniquely, all tractors at this terminal will be powered by LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas). Asyaport chose this fuel as it eliminates particulate emissions and leads to much lower NOx emissions than diesel. Furthermore, in Turkey LNG is considerably cheaper than diesel and there is an LNG filling station close to the terminal.
Terberg Benschop and their Turkish distributor Portunus worked closely with Robin van der Kooij and Marc Desmons of TiL to select the most suitable tractor for this application. They settled on 40 YT222 tractors with 170 kW Mercedes engines: powerful enough to handle two trailers carrying 20″ containers. These engines are also used in hundreds of busses in Istanbul, so there is significant expertise available for their maintenance. Servicing and support will be provided by Portunus who are based in Istanbul. For TIL, one of the deciding factors was that Terberg had proven their capability by supplying a fully operational LNG-powered tractor at short notice for a project in Valencia, Spain. Delivery of the tractors will commence in January 2015.
Terberg will also supply 38 tractors to TIL’s terminal at Lomé in Togo, West Africa. The company won this order based on the high quality and reliability of their tractors, combined with an attractive price.
Terberg Benschop, based in the Netherlands, is a family-owned company which supplies a wide range of tractors and other special vehicles to shipping terminals, industry and distribution centres worldwide. Terberg focusses on reliability and easy maintenance to ensure a low total cost of ownership. The company also customises the vehicles for each customer to optimise efficiency in every application.