Belawan ( zh, t=勿老灣, s=, poj=mài lau ôan) is a
harbor in
Medan,
North Sumatra
North Sumatra ( id, Sumatra Utara) is a province of Indonesia located on the northern part of the island of Sumatra. Its capital and largest city is Medan. North Sumatra is Indonesia's fourth most populous province after West Java, East Java and ...
. Located on the northeast coast of
Sumatra
Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...
, Belawan is Indonesia's busiest
seaport outside of
Java. It constitutes the most northerly of the city of Medan's 21 administrative
districts
A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions o ...
(''kecamatan''), and covers an area of 29.44 km
2; at the 2010 Census it had a population of 95,506.
There are weekly
passenger ship
A passenger ship is a merchant ship whose primary function is to carry passengers on the sea. The category does not include cargo vessels which have accommodations for limited numbers of passengers, such as the ubiquitous twelve-passenger freig ...
s operated by
Pelni from Medan to
Tanjung Balai Karimun,
Batam,
Riau Islands and
Tanjung Priok,
Jakarta
Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta ...
A regular
ferry
A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...
service connects Belawan to across the
Strait of Malacca to
Penang
Penang ( ms, Pulau Pinang, is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, by the Malacca Strait. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay ...
,
Malaysia; at times there was a ferry that also ran from Belawan to
Phuket,
Thailand and to
Langkawi, Malaysia.
History
The port was initially built in 1890, to provide a location where
tobacco could be transferred directly between rail lines from the interior and deep-draft ships. The harbor expanded in 1907 with the construction of a new section intended for Chinese and indigenous traders, reserving the existing port for European shipping. In the early twentieth century the port's business expanded, with the growth of major
rubber and
palm oil
Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of the oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 33% of global oils produced from ...
plantations in northern Sumatra. In the 1920s several major berthing facilities were built.
In 1938, the port was the largest port in the
Dutch East Indies
The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, which ...
, in terms of
cargo value. Cargo volumes dropped substantially after Indonesian independence, and did not reach pre-independence levels again until the mid-1960s. A major restructuring in 1985 saw the construction of a
container terminal; it almost immediately captured about one-fifth of Indonesia's containerized exports. Major products exported include rubber, palm oil, tea, and coffee.
In early 2013, Belawan Port can serve 1.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) per year and still gradually expands to 2 million TEUs with Rp.975 billion ($89.7 million) fund.
References
External links
*Airriess, Christopher A (1991). Global economy and port morphology in Belawan, Indonesia. ''Geographical Review'' 81(2):183-196.
Populated places in North Sumatra
B
B
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