January 29, 2008 | 12:00am
Asian Terminals Inc. (ATI) has signed up to bid for the 25-year concession contract of the Mindanao Container Terminal at the Phividec Industrial Authority complex in Misamis Oriental, the company told the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday.
ATI said the bidding for MCT which also took place yesterday, marked the third time the facility was bid out.
The MCT is identified as a Mindanao flagship project, which is seen to jumpstart Mindanao’s potential as the country’s food basket. It has been designed to be exclusively operated for fully-containerized and semi-containerized domestic and foreign vessels with an annual capacity of 270,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) for its Phase 1.
Aside from ATI, Harbour Centre Port Terminal Inc. of the family of businessman Reghis Romero has also signified its intention to join the bidding.
ATI manages the Manila South Harbor. Its major competitor in the container business is International Container Terminal Services Inc., which operates the Manila International Container Terminal and on the non-containerized business, Harbour Centre, which operates a private commercial port at the northern end of the Manila North Harbor.
At the Port of Batangas, Luzon’s busiest port after Manila, ATI’s subsidiary (ATI Batangas Inc.) competes for cargo volume with private port operators PNOC-EB and Farmix and with ICTSI, which operates the Bauan International Port Inc.
ATI Batangas is the only terminal operator that handles containerized, Ro-ro and passenger traffic in Batangas.
