Introducing Tema Tema is a city in Ghana along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Located about 25 km east from the capital Accra, Tema is the capital of the Tema Metropolitan-District. As of 2010, the population stood at about 292, 773 inhabitants. The city lies along the Greenwich Meridian and known as the �Harbour town’ since it is the most significant seaport in Ghana. The town is a major trading center and also hosts an oil refinery and industrial areas. It links with the capital by railway and a highway. Cargo Traffic Tema port is among two seaports in Ghana with the other being at Sekondi-Takoradi. It is the larger of the two and handles about 80% of imports and exports. It serves as a loading and unloading terminal for goods destined for Ghana’s interior and land-locked countries to the north. The port authorities went on an expansion project by investing in IT systems and building new terminals. The increased volumes of traffic reflect on the impacts of these development steps. In a span of slightly over a decade, the traffic increased from 7. 3 million tons to 13.4 million tons, registering one of the most significant increases in cargo capacity for the entire period the port has been in existence.   Cargo Terminal Capacity The port consists of a dozen berths, transit sheds, warehouses, dockyard, and a cargo terminal. There is a section with covered and open areas to store cargo including a paved field for containers about 77,000 square meters. This space can hold steel products, containers, and other conventional cargo. The port has a capacity of around 8000 containers at a given time. These are the twenty-four-foot types.   At the cargo terminal, different goods on transit exchange hands from one form of transport to another. The closed storage area of this facility spans an area that is slightly higher than 25,000 square meters, consists of half a dozen sheds with a total sum capacity of 53,000 tons of cargo. Numerous private firms have warehousing and storage facilities located in Tema city and around the port.   Number Of Terminals The port consists of 12 berths and two individual berths; one for oil purposes and another used exclusively by Volta Aluminium Company. The depths range between 8 meters and 11.5 meters at the lower and higher points. The port only has berths of 11.5m at the deep sections of the seafront. There is frequent congestion experienced at these points. Tema often lightens incoming cargo ships and shifts them to more shallow berths to solve this problem. The other 10 berths are multipurpose. The port requires all ship captains to send a prior 72-hour notice before arrival.   There are three terminals at the Tema port. The primary storage terminal is the largest and handles most goods arriving or leaving port. The others include Grain and Bulk handling and Multi-purpose terminals. This section is solely responsible for handling agricultural products. The government funded this project and placed the Ghana Ports & Harbours Authority (G.P.H.A) in charge of its construction as well as operation and maintenance. The multipurpose terminal is a small location within the port area around the Industrial area. It offers a full range of container terminal services and sits on a 3.85 parcel of land.   Container facilities Tema seaport offers facilities to take care of containers. The standard unit used is the Twenty-four unit. A private company called Meridian-Port Services (MPS) manages and operates a dedicated container terminal. This terminal uses berth 1 and 2 of the port and quay length of 575 meters. The facilities also include yard gantries, reach stackers, ship to shore gantries, a six-lane gate complex, mobile cranes, and numerous reefer plug points.   The Golden-Jubilee Terminal(G.J.T) is the inland clearance depot that is at the western reaches of the port. This facility covers an area of 97,412 square meters and consists of a container freight section (C.F.S), an open area for storage, car park and un-stuffing of the containers. There is also a state warehouse, security services and financial services including customs. The facility provides delivery services and receipt storage. It is also responsible for delivering and receiving vehicles imported using containers and also provides a similar service for less than full container loads, full container loads and house-to-house deliveries and receipt.   Freight Forwarders   These are professional firms that specialize in shipping and storage of merchandise on behalf of their clientele. The logistics concerned with importing and exporting involves regulations as well as processes. Even if it is paperwork that you need, these companies can do all that for you for a fee. They have operational offices at the Main storage terminal and around the water port.