The safe port of Pelepas

PETALING JAYA: The Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP) in Johor, one of the busiest container ports in the world, has stringent measures to ensure maximum security for cargo shipments.

Claiming to have a clean slate on cargo thefts, PTP said this was due to a combination of technology and physical measures, including strict enforcement of the Protected Areas and Protected Places Act by its auxiliary police.

“To ensure that the cargo is safe, PTP uses a computerised container tracking system. This allows us to account for every single container put there,” a PTP spokesman said.

The port handled about 6.5 million TEUs (containers/twenty-foot equivalent units) last year, with about 200,000 containers stored in the yard at any one time.

“According to our standard operating procedure, we must respond to any security threat within five minutes. Upon detecting suspicious activity in the container yard or other areas in the port, the auxiliary police will alert all exit points, while a team is sent to the incident area,” the spokesman added.

He said the PTP handled transshipment cargo and local cargo, adding that the transshipment cargo would not leave the port area until it was time to ship it off to its final destination.

“From the container yard, transshipment cargo is either pulled to one of the warehouses in the PTP free zone for value adding purposes, or is loaded onto another vessel at a later date for its onward journey to the final destination,” he said.

For local cargo, which leaves the port for a domestic destination by land, the containers can only be picked up by forwarders and hauliers who have pre-registered with PTP.