The Port of Barcelona inaugurates two cranes to increase the traffic of goods
The port authority increases the maximum height of the structures, limited by the proximity of the airport
BarcelonaA big day at the Port of Barcelona. The Chinese company Hutchison Ports has made official this Thursday the incorporation of two state-of-the-art cranes at the BEST container terminal, which concentrates 42% of the wealth generated by the entire infrastructure. According to the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, "they are much more than two cranes, they are the difference between being a port of passage or a gateway".
The new cranes are the tallest operating to date at the terminal –they measure 55 meters–, and they are a unique model to make them compatible with the proximity of El Prat airport, which requires limiting the height of port operations. Puente has assured that the increase in height "has required very meticulous work" and has thanked the work especially to the experts in air transport.It is a port with very unique characteristics, it is very close to an airport", he stressed.
In addition to Puente, the Minister of Business and Labor, Miquel Sàmper; the mayor of El Prat de Llobregat, Alba Bou; the deputy mayor of Barcelona City Council, Jordi Valls, and the president of the Port of Barcelona, José Alberto Carbonell, also supported the terminal and the Chinese company. They agreed to highlight the impact of the BEST terminal for the Catalan economy, and its leadership on a global scale (it was Hutchison's first semi-automated terminal in the world). "It is very difficult to have an export capacity like the one Catalonia has without an institution like the Port", summarized Sàmper.
What are the cranes for?
The new cranes will serve to load containers that arrive by sea and that will later leave the port by land, or vice versa. In 2028, BEST will incorporate three cranes identical to those inaugurated this Thursday: in total, they will have represented an investment of 60 million euros (12 million each).
The entry of the new cranes is part of the expansion project of the BEST terminal, which will have required an investment of 270 million euros. In addition to the machinery, it also includes the construction of blocks, the spaces destined to store containers between one transport and another. Once the last six blocks begin to operate, scheduled for the second half of 2027, the terminal will have 40.
Waiting for railway access
The minister celebrated that the projects for the new road and rail accesses to the port "are finally in the drafting phase, after 20 years of gestation". Puente stressed that "a 21st-century port cannot depend on trucks, it needs trains, a lot of trains".
The freight traffic at the port of Barcelona this 2026 has continued to grow, despite the instability of supply chains. Between January and July, it transported 2.2 million containers, 1.5% more than in the first half of last year.