September 11 - The third shipment of four gates for the Panama Canal expansion project's new locks has arrived at the Atlantic entrance to the waterway onboard Coscol's heavy lift vessel Xia Zhi Yuan 6.
The gates were shipped to Panama from Trieste in Italy, under the guidance of Geodis Wilson's industrial projects team. These gates will be used in the new locks at the Pacific side of the canal.
Two of the gates weigh in at 4,163 tonnes each, measuring 57.6 m x 10 m x 31.92 m, and are the heaviest of the 16 rolling gates to be used in the expanded canal.
The other two gates have the dimensions 57.6 m x 8 m x 22.3 m, and weigh 2,867 tonnes each.
Only one shipment is left, before all 16 gates required for the third set of locks project are received in Panama.
The construction of the gates began in 2011 by Italian manufacturer Cimolai SpA.
The Panama Canal Authority (ACP) claims that the expansion project is currently 79 percent complete. ACP and the consortium in charge of the design and construction of the third set of locks, Grupo Unidos por el Canal (GUPC), have come to an agreement that all lock gates must be in Panama by February 2015.
