Ecomarine buoys safety at Calabar seaport

Ecomarine Terminal Limited (ECM) has commenced arrangements to boost safety of operations at its terminal in the Calabar Ports complex.

The Chief Executive Officer, ECM Terminals, Adedayo Balogun, in an exclusive chart with The Guardian, said the company has commenced massive work to entrench an improved safety culture through a world-class fire fighting infrastructure and a new template that ensures compliance with international safety standards in the discharge of its operations.

Balogun, who emphasized the need for safety and security of operations at the seaports, said his company has taken the bull by the horn in other to complement the existing facility by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).

“We wanted something of a permanent nature, apart from the equipment that will only be made available on demand. We felt the need to have a safety system that is sustainable as an integral part of a port infrastructure because of our multi-purpose nature,” he said.

Balogun said, the fire hydrant facility could assess any location within the terminal and beyond, adding that the terminal is currently ISO certified and ISPS compliant (Security level 1).

On its services, he said: “We are now doing more of dry bulk, and liquids because of the limitations imposed by the draft level of the channel which has made it difficult for us to attract regular containers vessels.

That is why we keep appealing to NPA to speed up the process of dredging the Calabar channel and as an interim measure, grant us rebate as an incentive to attract container lines to the seaport, in view of the limitations imposed by the shallow water channel,”

Acting General Manager, Ecomarine Terminals Limited, Diran Akorede, said the project, which comes with a water tank of 1 million liters capacity, is expected to be commissioned by June 2018 with 24hour services.

He said: “We are a multi-purpose terminal, we discharge and load different kinds of cargo including the flammable ones, petroleum products. What we are doing now is to install a booster system.

So, for us to operate efficiently we have to be very safe and that is why we are putting up the hydrants so that it would be a complete system.”