Yesterday, with the transit of the COSCO Shipping Panama hat, the widening of the channel of Panama hat is inaugurated



Yesterday, with the transit of portacontainer the COSCO Shipping Panama hat of the Chinese shipowning group COSCO Shipping Corporation Lowers, is inaugurated the widening of the channel of Panama hat realized with the activation of a third new series of locks. The work has allowed to institute a third distance of transit that affords the passage of portacontenitori wide until 49 meters, long until 366 meters, with the maximum draught of -15 a cargo meters and ability until about 13.000-14.000 rather than until 5.000 teu as previously. The Chinese ship journeyed yesterday is long almost 300 meters, wide 48 meters and has the maximum weight and size ability pairs to 9.472 teu.

To the ceremony, Panama hat to the outlet in the Pacific Ocean is turned in the afternoon to the arrival of the COSCO Shipping after the crosswalk of the channel, has participated the President of the Republic of Panama hat, Juan Carlos Varela, the administrator of the Panama hat Canal Authority (the ACP), Jorge Luis Quijano, other representatives of the institutions and 5,000 Panamanians.

The widening work, that they have involved an investment of 5,25 billion dollars, is started on September 7, 2007 and is entrusted to the Grupo Unidos por el Canal (GUPC), consortium constituted from the Sacyr Vallehermoso Spanish, the Italian Salt Impregilo, the Belgian Jan De Nul and the Panamanian City Constructora (CUSA). The Italian company has emphasized that the construction of the new channel has demanded an enormous yard with numbers mind-boggling: 50 million cubic metres of diggings, 290,000 tons of iron, 4,8 million cubic metres of concrete, beyond 100 million business hours.

The Italian company has evidenced that the project realized from Salt Impregilo has introduced important innovations for the world of the constructions, for example with the creation of a system of great communicating basins that they allow the saving of 60% of water to every passage of the locks, while with the old channel the water used for the transit of the ships will continue to flow down entirely in sea. Moreover Salt Impregilo has emphasized that jewel of the project is the 16 gigantic floodgates in steel constructed in Italy and transported by sea in the course of the seven years of construction. Ognuna of these floodgates, from the medium weight of four thousand tons - it has explained the society - hardly executes in four minutes own task, that it is that to open and to close the rooms of water that - working as enormous freight elevators - affords to mega the ships to exceed the unevenness of 27 meters existing between the artificial lake of name "Gatún" and the two oceans.