Andre Klynsmith

Ports and Terminals

Seventeen Cranes for the Gateway: Walvis Bay's Big Container-Handling Upgrade Ships from China

Seventeen new rubber-tyred gantry cranes (RTGs) are on their way to Walvis Bay from China, loaded aboard three COSCO SHIPPING heavy-lift vessels in a boost to container-handling capacity at Namibia's main port and a key SADC gateway.

Ports and Terminals

11 August 2026 • 4 min read

Yard cranes rarely make headlines, but they decide how fast a truck gets in and out of a port. A shipment of 17 RTGs bound for Walvis Bay is a concrete signal that Namibia's gateway is being equipped to handle more containers -- and to move them faster.

What Is Being Shipped

COSCO SHIPPING Specialized Carriers has deployed three vessels -- DA XIANG, DA XIN and DA AN -- to carry 17 rubber-tyred gantry cranes from Zhenhua Heavy Industries' Nantong base in China to Walvis Bay, Namibia. The loading was run as a coordinated operation under a tight schedule and third-party inspection requirements, including night-time work, with all 17 units reportedly loaded and passing inspection on the first attempt.

Two of the ships, DA XIN and DA AN, are COSCO "Da Type 3" heavy-transport vessels built in 2013, each fitted with one 100-tonne and two 350-tonne cranes for a combined 700-tonne lifting capacity. According to the project information, the cranes are intended to support cargo-handling operations and increase throughput capacity at the Namibian port.

Why RTGs Matter to Truck Turnaround

A rubber-tyred gantry crane is the workhorse of the container yard: it stacks boxes, shuffles them between the stack and the quay, and lifts them onto and off trucks. When a terminal is short of working RTGs, containers do not get moved on schedule, stacks clog, and trucks queue at the gate no matter how quickly ships are worked at the quay.

Adding 17 units is therefore a direct lever on the metric operators care about most: how long a truck spends inside the port. More yard cranes mean more simultaneous container moves, shorter dwell times and, in principle, faster turnaround for the hauliers running to and from Walvis Bay.

A Gateway Building Headroom

Walvis Bay is Namibia's principal port and a gateway for landlocked SADC markets, feeding the Trans-Kalahari, Trans-Cunene and Walvis Bay-Ndola-Lubumbashi corridors into Botswana, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its container terminal has capacity of roughly 750,000 TEU a year but has been running well below that, with throughput around 254,000 TEU in the 2024/25 period. Investing in handling equipment is how a port converts spare capacity on paper into reliable performance in practice.

The honest caveat is that equipment alone does not guarantee faster service -- crews must be trained, the cranes reliably maintained, and yard processes tuned to use them. But the direction is clear. As South Africa's Durban gateway pursues a long-dated expansion, Walvis Bay is quietly kitting out to compete for the same regional cargo, and that competition tends to work in the shipper's favour.

About the Author
	Andre Klynsmith Entrepreneur & Technology Enthusiast Andre's expertise spans technology, blockchain, transport, and logistics -- with a passion for innovation and driving positive change across industries. info@laaimylorrie.com | laaimylorrie.com