Capt. Emmanuel Omotayo, the Managing Director of Apapa Bulk Terminal Ltd., said the company had invested over 250 million dollars (N40 billion) on infrastructure after the concession of the terminal in 2006.

Omotayo disclosed this in an interview with newsmen in Lagos on Thursday.

He said that the company, owned by the Flour Mills of Nigeria, had even spent more on ports development before 2006.

“Before the port reform programme, Flour Mills had been operating Berths One to Four. We developed the ports before the reform was introduced.

“In spite of our investments in cargo throughput and infrastructure in the ports, we still pay the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) for use of the ports.

“Government, in its magnanimity, gave us right of first refusal when the issue of concession came up.

“In view of our heavy investment in the ports before the concession, we accepted to be concessionaires,’’ he said.

Omotayo said that when the port reform came, it was a blessing to the operators because they had a vision of what they wanted to do.

He said that all the infrastructure they met prior to port concession had been pulled down due to their level of decay and new structures put in place.

The company chief said that the new infrastructure erected after the concession included warehouses, sugar refinery, marine towers, wheat and cement discharge equipment as well as conveyors.

He said that the company had also built silos with storage capacity of 250,000 tonnes up from the 8,000 tonnes silos met in 2006.

Omotayo said that due to on-going improvements in the terminal, vessels with a draft of 12.5 metres could now berth at terminal instead of the 9.5 metres draft met in 2006.

He said that the terminal had the capacity to receive vessels with deeper draft, but inadequate depth of water in the channel had prevented this.

“One of our challenges is the lack of getting adequate water in the channels.

“A vessel capable of carrying 75,000 tonnes of cargo, but due to the water depth, brings in only 40,000 to 56,000 tonnes of cargo.

“We submitted an application to the NPA in 2010 to reconstruct part of the terminal, but this is yet to be approved,’’ Omotayo said.

According to him, another challenge is lack of adequate space because the terminal had been delineated and carved out.

“This puts a limit to what we can do in the terminal.

“Our predominant operation is cargo operation, warehousing and logistics provision, but if we want to go into other businesses we are limited.

“We have been intending to go into liquid bulk manufacturing like vegetable oil under our agro-allied industries, but we are constrained by lack of space.