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In Cameroon, the seaside town of Kribi was given the first deep-water port in the country a few years ago. However, the port is slow to realize its full potential due to a lack of complementary structure. On June 8, the Bolloré group inaugurated a major logistics base which should optimize the operation of this port area.
From his window on the first floor of the small administrative building adjoining the gigantic Kribi Logistics Hub warehouse, Pierre Parfait Essola, the head of the logistics operations section of this new warehouse built by the Bolloré group, loses nothing of the rotations of trucks and other machinery intended for when unloading containers: “ Currently, we have our ristaquer which is the mechanical container handling equipment. »
The pace of operations is sustained in this warehouse which operates 24 hours a day and for the Bolloré group, this investment was necessary, if not essential, to enhance the attractiveness of this young port which has been in operation for barely four years. Investment cost: 4 billion CFA francs in the first phase, on an area of 24 hectares.
According to Serge Agnero, regional director of the Bolloré transport and logistics group in the Gulf of Guinea, “ the vocation of this hub is to be the spearhead of the logistics and industrial complex of Kribi and to allow industrialists, but also Cameroonian traders, but also economic players in the sub-region to export or import their goods under the best conditions. »
In terms of the volume of transactions processed since the commissioning of this logistics hub, the group claims to have almost doubled. ” As soon as the cotton activity was launched at the multi-purpose terminal, an average of 5,000 tons of cotton were processed, assures Pierre Parfait Essola, the head of the logistics operations section of this new warehouse. On the other hand, here, at the Kribi Logistics Hub base last year, we handled 9,000 tonnes, almost double that. We plan to go further this year. »
For the regional director, this investment is proof that the group is not completely disengaging, at least not for the moment, from Cameroon and Africa despite the announcement of the sale of its activities to another operator.
« Our long-term ambition is to triple the capacity of the facilities already in operation, explains Serge Agnero. This investment, which was recently inaugurated, is part of the batch of investments that we have conducted over the past decade in Cameroon and which covers a total of 400 billion CFA francs. »
In any case, for the port of Kribi, with this new logistics base, all dreams of grandeur are now allowed.