Noel Hylton, president of the Port Authority of Jamaica and guest speaker at the Rotary Club of St Andrew, speaks to the club members during the club weekly luncheon at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston on Tuesday, June 6, 2006. - file

The Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ) has chosen international construction company E. Pihl & Sons AS for a US$16.5 million (J$1.19 billion) job to reclaim lands at the Hunts Bay shoreline in Kingston.

Pihl was selected under open tender, which the National Contracts Commission has signed off on as following procedure.

Cabinet has to ratify the selection prior to award.

The scope of works to be done by Pihl covers reclamation as well as the installation of vertical drains in the area of the Kingston Container Terminal.

It wasn't immediately clear how much land was to be reclaimed, nor for what purpose.

PAJ spokesman Pat Belinfanti requested more time Tuesday to respond to Wednesday Business queries.

Wednesday Business was also unable to ascertain the square footage of the area, the time line of the project and source of funding ,among other details.

"I'm not answering anything like that," Belinfanti said when pressed about the project.

The KCT has undergone a series of projects to boost capacity and its transhipment business.

The US$248 million phase five works, which constructed a new Western Berth at KCT, boosted capacity to 3.2 million TEUs.

The port's throughput was 1.8 million TEUs in 2007, and 1.98 million in 2006.

Expansion projects

The PAJ is the largest port operation in Jamaica and handled 1.8 million TEUs in 2007 but its President, Noel Hylton, said at the opening of the Western Berth that the PAJ was targeting annual business of five million TEUs by year 2014.

He did not specify when the other expansion projects were to come on stream, but nothing within the Port Authority's budget suggests that work on a phase six was budgeted within this financial year, ending March 2009.