Worth more than US$243 million, Deepwater Container Terminal 1 in Sihanoukville starts its construction site

The commencement of the first phase of an expansive deep-water container terminal project in Sihanoukville was inaugurated by Prime Minister Samdech Hun Manet and H.E. ISHIBASHI Rintaro, parliamentary vice-minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism of Japan.

The construction, spearheaded by the Japanese firm TOA Corporation and technically supervised by Nippon Koei and Oriental Consultants Global, is slated for completion in 2026 with an estimated cost exceeding US$243 million.

New Deep Water Container Terminal: The first step is 350 meters long, and the construction depth is 14.5 meters. Once completed, it will have the capacity to accommodate 60,000 tons (or 4,000 TEUs) of container vessels with transport links in the Asia-Pacific region to the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, and it is expected to increase the total port capacity to 1,250,000 TEUs per year.

This transformative deep-sea port project anticipates not only revolutionizing Sihanoukville’s shipping capabilities but also yielding significant cost savings. Expected to accommodate 93% of the area at Sihanoukville Autonomous Port—compared to the current 18%—the new container port is projected to reduce shipping costs by approximately US$200 per TEU.

Following the first phase, the Royal Government plans expansive growth with the second and third phases. The second phase, with an investment of US$698 million, aims to enhance port capacity to over 1.8 million containers annually, allowing for efficient transport within the Indo-Pacific region. The subsequent third phase, with an additional investment of over US$698 million, is poised to elevate the port’s capacity to around 2.5 million containers per year, facilitating seamless global trade.

As the port embarks on this ambitious expansion, the feasibility study underscores its potential to metamorphose from a small international port into a large-scale, internationally pivotal port. In the first 11 months of 2023, the volume of transit goods was more than 7 million tons, an increase of 11.34%, and the total business revenue was more than US$85 million, an increase of 2.71% compared to the same period last year and the same in 2022.

In addition, the volume of containers passing through the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port totaled more than 750,000 containers, with an average increase of 10.83% in the last 12 years from 2010 to 2022.