Port of Lobito
The Port of Lobito is Angola’s second busiest port and is situated on the Atlantic coast facing the centre of the country, and is 30km to the north of the large city of Benguela.
Position: Latitude 12° 20′ 47″ S – Longitude 13° 32′ 45″ E
Administered by the Empresa Portuaria do Lobito and handling approximately 2 million tonnes of cargo annually, the port is also the coastal terminus of the refurbished Benguela Railway, which stretches south to Benguela and then inland as far as the Democratic Republic of Congo border at Luau. Built to Cape gauge (1067mm) the 1,437-km long railway connects with other Cape gauge railways in Central and Southern Africa and provides an alternative and shorter railway to the coast for the DRC and Zambian copperbelts.
For many years the port of Lobito was Angola’s busiest port, handling not only ores from the mines of the Congo/DRC and Northern Rhodesia/Zambia, but also agricultural products from Angola’s interior. This era of activity and prosperity came to a halt with the onset of Angola’s long civil war (1975-2002) but with the rejuvenation of the Benguela railway the port is facing a return to its former position.
History:
The town of Lobito was founded in 1843 on the instruction of Queen Maria II of Portugal. Although ships at that and earlier times were able to access the protected bay, the harbour works of the port itself only began in 1903 along with the commencement of the Benguela Railway (Caminho de Ferro de Benguela – CFB) in that same year. After several stops and restarts the privately-operated CFB finally reached the Congo border in 1928.
Lobito Port
The port itself is located within the Lobito Bay, protected from the Atlantic Ocean by a almost 5km long sandspit.
The Port of Lobito berths have a draught alongside of between 9.4 and 10 metres
The anchorage depth is between 14m and 15.2m
The Port Authority is Empresa Portuaria do Lobito, E.P.
Whose address is Avenida da Indepenencia, CP 16, Lobito
Tel: +244 722 23439; Fax +244 272 222719
email: –
Website: –
Facebook page: https://web.facebook.com/eplobito/
Four short videos showing the port of Lobito:
YouTube [1:19]
YouTube Historic [1:15] (no sound)
YouTube (Portuguese) [4:50]
And for an animated video depicting the future development of the port [6:56] CLICK HERE