COLOMBO International Container Terminals (CICT), built and majority-owned by Hong Kong-listed China Merchant Holdings International (CMHI), is transforming Sri Lanka into a regional shipping hub.

Ultra-large ships that would earlier bypass Sri Lanka's shallow ports now come calling at the CICT-run "South Terminal" is raking it in for Colombo port like never before, writes the SCMP.

"See that big cat over there?" points Tissa Wickramasinghe, general manager, commercial and marketing, at CICT. "It takes US$200,000 every day to keep it purring. That's the kind of daily operating cost we are talking about for ships of this size (referring to CMA CGM's 16,020 TEU Marco Polo docked at the terminal). Even an hour's delay means big bucks. That's why they come here, for the reliability of service and the geography."

The terminal has been a phenomenal success in attracting ships with capacity of more than 10,000 TEU that would otherwise bypass Sri Lanka's shallow ports, Mr Wickramasinghe said.

"The new facilities make it (Colombo) the only port in the South Asia region with a deepwater terminal that can accommodate the newest breed of 18,000 TEU container ships. Higher efficiency and faster delivery times will attract larger vessels and higher volumes of trade," notes the Asian Development Bank in a recent report.

Colombo's new-found capacity to handle mega vessels is helping it to take on the transshipment role traditionally performed by ports in Malaysia, Singapore and Dubai. 

With its proximity to the lucrative India market than these hubs, Colombo is fast emerging as the region's port of choice since most of India's own ports lack the depth or the infrastructure to handle big vessels.

With more than 100 ship calling at the facility each month, the South Terminal handled one million TEU in the first eight months of the year. Throughtput totalled 686,600 TEU in 2014, its first year of operation.

"That's a huge achievement for any terminal anywhere in the world. The target is 1.3 TEU million this year and 2.4 million TEU in two years, which is the planned capacity of this terminal," says Mr Wickramasinghe.

Since becoming operational in April last year, CICT helped raise Colombo port's total annual throughput by 14 per cent to 4.9 million TEU. That compares with the port's compound annual growth rate of 1 per cent in the previous four years.

Colombo has now risen three spots to 30th on the Journal of Commerce's ranking of global container ports. When the terminal hits full capacity, Colombo will zoom into the top 20.