Singapore on Tuesday said its plans to build the world's biggest container terminal in a single location were on track, as it held a ceremony to mark a milestone in the initial construction phase of the mega-project.
Tuas Terminal is set to open progressively from 2021, six years after work began, and it is expected to be capable of handling 65 million twenty-foot long shipping containers per annum when fully completed in 2040.
Once completed, the terminal is slated to become the world's largest container terminal in a single location, said Quah Ley Hoon, chief executive of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.
"This will strengthen our Global Hub Port status, and more importantly, allow us to plug into the growing intra-Asia trade and global supply chain," Quah said.
The ports authority said the first of four construction phases - which alone covers an area equivalent to 383 football fields - is on schedule to be completed in 2021.
Officials and media gathered at the site on the industrial west of the island on Tuesday to witness the installation of the final caisson, a retaining structure used to build the wharf in the first phase of the multi-billion dollar scheme.
Shanghai is currently the world's busiest container port handling over 40 million shipping containers in 2018, according to industry data.
Phase one of the Singapore project is being constructed by a joint venture of DIAP, a Singaporean subsidiary of Belgian dredging firm DEME, and South Korea's Daelim Industrial .
(Reuters reporting by Fathin Ungku, Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Rashmi Aich)