Port Botany is a deepwater

seaport A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manc ...

located in

Botany Bay Botany Bay (Dharawal language, Dharawal: ''Kamay'') is an open oceanic embayment, located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, south of the Sydney central business district. Its source is the confluence of the Georges River at Taren Point a ...

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

, Australia. The port is dominated by trade in containerised manufactured products and, to a lesser extent, bulk liquid imports including

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil or simply oil, is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid chemical mixture found in geological formations, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons. The term ''petroleum'' refers both to naturally occurring un ...

and

natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...

. It is one of Australia's largest container ports and is administered by NSW Ports which entered into a 99-year lease agreement with the Port Authority of New South Wales in May 2013.

History

Prior to 1960 Sydney's international shipping facilities were exclusively located in

Port Jackson Port Jackson, commonly known as Sydney Harbour, is a natural harbour on the east coast of Australia, around which Sydney was built. It consists of the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove and Parramatta ...

, with bulk and break bulk docks at

Darling Harbour Darling Harbour is a harbour and neighborhood adjacent to the city centre of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, that is made up of a large recreational and pedestrian precinct that is situated on western outskirts of the Sydney central busines ...

and Walsh Bay with bulk and

roll-on/roll-off Roll-on/roll-off (RORO or ro-ro) ships are cargo ships designed to carry wheeled cargo, such as cars, motorcycles, trucks, semi-trailer trucks, buses, Trailer (vehicle), trailers, and railroad cars, that are driven on and off the ship on their ...

docks at Glebe Island and White Bay. With the advent of containerisation in the late 1950s it became clear that Sydney would require additional port facilities to cater for new cargo types. In the 1960s the government agency responsible for ports, the Maritime Services Board, recommended that a new port complex be developed in the northern part of Botany Bay adjacent to

Sydney Airport Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport — colloquially Kingsford Smith Airport, Sydney Airport or Mascot Airport — is an international airport serving Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, south of the Sydney central business district, in the subu ...

. The

Government of New South Wales The Government of New South Wales, also known as the NSW Government, is the executive state government of New South Wales, Australia. The government comprises 11 portfolios, led by a ministerial department and supported by several agencies. Th ...

endorsed the proposal in 1969 and in 1971 an Atkinson International / Leighton Holdings joint venture commenced work on two

container terminal A container port, container terminal, or intermodal terminal is a facility where cargo containers are transshipped between different transport vehicles, for onward transportation. The transshipment may be between container ships and land v ...

s to the north, and a bulk liquid wharf and storage area to the south..

Bulk liquids

The bulk liquid terminal was completed in 1979 as a common-user facility for the import of

, oil,

and chemicals. The terminal and storage area were progressively expanded during the 1980s including new

ethylene Ethylene (IUPAC name: ethene) is a hydrocarbon which has the formula or . It is a colourless, flammable gas with a faint "sweet and musky" odour when pure. It is the simplest alkene (a hydrocarbon with carbon–carbon bond, carbon–carbon doub ...

tanks and handling plant operated by ICI, and AGL storage caverns in 1994 and 2000. The bulk liquid terminal can accommodate ships of around in length and .

Containers

The northernmost container terminal was completed in 1979 and officially opened by

Premier Premier is a title for the head of government in central governments, state governments and local governments of some countries. A second in command to a premier is designated as a deputy premier. A premier will normally be a head of govern ...

Neville Wran Neville Kenneth Wran, (11 October 1926 – 20 April 2014) was an Australian politician who was the Premier of New South Wales from 1976 to 1986. He was the national president of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1980 to 1986 and chairman o ...

who christened it ''Brotherson Dock'' in memory of former Maritime Services Board chairman Bill Brotherson who had died in 1975. The terminal was initially leased to Australian shipping company ANL but was transferred to

Patrick Corporation Patrick Corporation is an Australian seaport operator with operations in Port of Brisbane, Brisbane, Fremantle Harbour, Fremantle, Port of Melbourne, Melbourne and Port Botany (seaport), Sydney. Formerly listed on the Australian Securities Exch ...

in the 1990s. In 2006 Patrick Corporation merged with Toll Holdings. The southern container terminal opened in 1982, christened ''Brotherson Dock Two'' and was leased to the newly formed stevedore company Container Terminals Australia (CTAL). Despite both terminals being of equal size and quay length, Brotherson Dock Two struggled to compete with its northern neighbour. In its first full year of operation, Brotherson Two handled just 91,000 containers with a berth occupancy rate of 40 percent. In the 1990s CTAL ceased operations and the terminal lease was onsold to shipping company P&O. In 2006 P&O was purchased by Dubai Ports.

Port expansion

The third container terminal at Port Botany was completed in June 2011. The A$515 million project included the reclamation of of land with the construction of of shipping wharves which will berth five vessels. In addition, there were associated rail and road networks. Baulderstone and

Jan De Nul Jan De Nul Group is a family-owned company, originally from Belgium, with a financial headquarters in Luxembourg. Its four main activities are Offshore Energy, Dredging Solutions, Construction Projects and Planet Redevelopment. History Founded ...

, the project's joint venture partners, were awarded the Australian Construction Achievement Award, the Australian construction industry's most prestigious award, for their work on the project. In December 2009,

Hutchison Whampoa Hutchison Whampoa Limited (HWL) was an investment holding company based in Hong Kong. It was a Fortune Global 500 company and one of the largest companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. HWL was an international corporation with a dive ...

invested in Terminal 3 through subsidiary Hutchison Port Holdings (and its wholly owned subsidiary Sydney International Container Terminals), and signed a 30-year lease with Sydney Ports Corporation, now transferred to NSW Ports. The terminal was expected to be operational during 2013. The expansion catered for continued growth in demand for imports by

intermodal container An intermodal container, often called a shipping container, or a freight container, (or simply "container") is a large metal crate designed and built for intermodal freight transport, meaning these containers can be used across different Mode ...

s and to provide space for a third

stevedore A dockworker (also called a longshoreman, stevedore, docker, wharfman, lumper or wharfie) is a waterfront manual laborer who loads and unloads ships. As a result of the intermodal shipping container revolution, the required number of dockwork ...

for Sydney. The expansion was twice the size recommended by an independent Commission of Inquiry in 2004. The commission's recommendation proposed that increased demand could be catered for by the two existing stevedores via improvements in technology and logistics. The concentration of NSW's container trade at Port Botany will see a tripling of containers being processed, and although there are plans to double the current percentage of containers being transported by freight rail from 20% to 40%, there will still be a 200% increase in container trucks on Sydney's roads. An A$84 million expansion to the Bulk Liquids Berth, called BLB2, commenced and doubled the capacity of bulk liquids operations. The BLB2, which became operational in mid-2013, is suitable for ships up to in length and .

References

{{reflist Botany Bay Infrastructure completed in 1979

Botany Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

1979 establishments in Australia