What Is A Seaport Terminal?

A seaport terminal or marine terminal is a facility in a port where cargo is handled. Terminals contain facilities for loading, unloading, and storing cargo. Production and processing facilities are often located near a seaport terminal but are not technically considered part of the terminal. Seaport terminals are sometimes referred to as docks.

When ships arrive in port, they need a safe place to be loaded and unloaded. The berths at a marine terminal allow ships to moor for this purpose. While many ships have cargo handling equipment on board, the cranes and elevators of a marine terminal can be useful or necessary for larger specialized cargoes. They can also allow extremely fast loading and unloading, so ships can be cleared quickly.

How Cargo Is Handled

The temporary storage of cargo is also often required, whether the cargo is awaiting the arrival of a ship or waiting for the next stage of transportation after unloading. Many ports now have large container terminals specifically designed to handle container ships and their cargo. This includes storage areas for full and empty shipping containers. Special cargo that does not fit into containers or is transported for other purposes may also have special storage requirements. Temperature-controlled storage is a good example, which is also offered at many marine terminals.

Personnel at marine terminals help secure ships for docking, operate cargo handling equipment, and assist with the storage of goods. Marine terminal operations can take place around the clock and often depend on a rotating workforce. People interested in a job on a particular day show up at the gates to see if ships that need to be loaded or unloaded have arrived. Depending on the port and its policies, they may need to be certified as longshoremen or union members.

In some parts of the world, there are also offshore terminals. This is most common in oil-producing countries where large tankers are too large to enter a port. Instead, they are loaded and unloaded offshore. These marine terminals can accommodate several large ships at a time and are constantly replenished to ensure that tankers can always refuel. For people who need to go ashore, boats usually run between the terminal and the coast, and transportation can be arranged.

Container Terminals

A container terminal is a place where shipping containers are stored and loaded onto the appropriate vehicle or vessel to complete delivery. There are a variety of container designs and types in which goods are shipped. However, the usual container holds as much cargo as a semi-truck box trailer. Special overhead cranes are used at the container terminal to stack and organize the containers and load them onto trucks, trains, and ships. Most container terminals are located near rail lines and highways. Some marine terminals are also located near large bodies of water.

A shipping container looks like a box trailer on a semi-truck. The container is connected to a trailer at each corner and can be removed and lifted off the trailer to be stacked on top of another container or placed on a rail car or on the deck of a ship. In a busy container terminal, many containers are pushed into place by many trucks so that the overhead crane can place them on the proper means of transport.

Some large manufacturing facilities are able to take the truck out of the transportation equation. By loading the containers onto a railcar at the production site, the goods can be transported to a container terminal on the coast and loaded onto a ship without ever having been loaded onto an articulated truck.

Specialized Container Terminals

Some highly specialized container terminals are located at major airports around the world. Air transportation in containers is not common and is reserved for only the most urgent shipments due to the higher cost. Rail container terminal locations are often referred to as intermodal. An inland container terminal is where container shipments move between rail and truck. Terminals that also include marine transportation are called marine terminals.

Loaded and empty containers are stored in a terminal, with the loaded containers being shipped to meet contractual deadlines. Empty containers are stored in stacks and can take up space in a terminal for long periods of time. Larger terminals have repair shops where damaged containers are brought up to code. Reefer containers have fuel tanks and refrigeration units called reefers that maintain the temperature inside the container. These units can be replenished and maintained at the repair center.

Marine terminals are usually equipped with large stationary gantry cranes. Many intermodal terminals have mobile gantry cranes. This type of container terminal can pick up a container at one end of the terminal and transport it through the terminal to load it onto a train on the other side.

Important Seaport Terminals in Turkey

As a country surrounded by seas on all three sides, Turkey has many important ports. One of the most important is the port of Mersin, which has 21 berths and handles an average of 15 million tons of cargo annually. Another port is the Port of Izmir, which is located between Western Europe and North Africa. The Port of Izmir offers equipment, mixed cargo, bulk, liquid cargo and passenger services. The Port of Izmir has a pier length of 2,959 meters and can accommodate approximately 3,640 ships per year.

After the ports of Mersin and Izmir, the third largest port in Turkey is Haydarpasa, located on the Bosphorus. Haydarpaşa Port remains the largest container port in the Marmara region. The area of the container terminal in the port is 55 thousand m2 and the annual handling capacity is 52 thousand 800 tons.