The trestles were made in Greece and shipped to Limassol for assembly, by specially trained staff, an announcement said. The “EDT Niki”, a 46m length barge with deck cargo capacity of 1,132 tonnes, was utilised for the transportation of the trestles. Qualified staff with offshore experience conducted trial tests prior to the actual trestle installation. The jetty which will extend 1.2 km into open sea will comprise 42 trestles intotal.

The Managing Director of VTT Vasiliko Ltd, George Papanastasiou, said: “We are very proud to have successfully completed another phase in the construction of the oil storage terminal of our company. The jetty, currently constructed at Vasiliko, is unique in the Mediterranean, and will be used for loading and unloading ship-tankers with oil products as well as for oil products’ transhipment between ship-tankers, which currently takes place in the open sea with all the risk that this entails. This terminal will be making Cyprus an oil products’ trading hub.” The terminal will serve more than 500 ships per year, which is approximately the number of ships currently being handled at Limassol. Construction works for the jetty as well as for the first phase of the terminal will be completed in July 2014 when the jetty and Terminal will be put into operation.

VTT Vasiliko Ltd is a company registered in Cyprus, a subsidiary of VTTI B.V. VTTI, a joint venture of two companies, owns and operates oil storage terminals in 14 countries with a total capacity of 8.6 million m³. VTTI’s shareholders are the Dutch energy giant Vitol, the largest private energy trading company in the world, and MISC, a leading international shipping company, owned by the Malaysian state oil company Petronas.

Source: Cyprus Mail