The Fremantle Outer Harbour is the part of

Fremantle Harbour Fremantle Harbour is Western Australia's largest and busiest general cargo port and an important historical site. The inner harbour handles a large volume of sea containers, vehicle imports and livestock exports, cruise shipping and naval vis ...

located in the

Cockburn Sound Cockburn Sound (Nyungar Aboriginal Australian name: Derbal Nara) is an inlet of the Indian Ocean on the coast of Western Australia. It extends from the south of the mouth of the Swan River at Fremantle for about 25 km to Point Peron ne ...

, at the

City of Kwinana The City of Kwinana is a local government area of Western Australia. It covers an area of approximately 118 square kilometres in metropolitan Perth, and lies about 38 km south of Perth central business district, via the Kwinana Freew ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. Fremantle Harbour consists of the Inner Harbour, which is situated on the mouth of the Swan River; and the Outer Harbour, which is 20 km to the south. It is managed by the

Fremantle Port Authority Fremantle Port Authority, also known by its registered business name Fremantle Ports, is the responsible authority created under the Western Australian Port Authorities Act 1999. Harbour administration In August 1829 the Fremantle Harbour Master ...

. The Outer Harbour's creation dates back to the Stephenson-Hepburn Report and was initiated in 1955.

Overview

The Fremantle Outer Harbour consists of, from north to south, the Alcoa Jetty, the Kwinana Bulk Terminal, the BP Oil Refinery Jetty, the Kwinana Bulk Jetty and the CBH Grain Jetty. Of these, the Kwinana Bulk Terminal and the Kwinana Bulk Jetty are operated by the Fremantle Ports and serve for the import and export of bulk cargoes and liquids, among them iron ore, coal, cement clink, gypsum,

liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volu ...

, petroleum and fertiliser. The other three facilities are privately operated. The Outer Harbour deepwater bulk facilities in at Kwinana were first developed in 1955, as part of the Stephenson-Hepburn Report, to service the Kwinana industrial area, and saw rapid expansion in the 1960s and 1970s. The Kwinana industrial area itself was established in 1952 with the ''Oil Refinery Industry Act 1952'' and an agreement between the

Government of Western Australia The Government of Western Australia, formally referred to as His Majesty's Government of Western Australia, is the Australian state democratic administrative authority of Western Australia. It is also commonly referred to as the WA Government o ...

and the

Anglo-Iranian Oil Company The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was a British company founded in 1909 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Persia (Iran). The British government purchased 51% of the company in 1914, gaining a controlling number ...

, now BP, to establishment an oil refinery at Kwinana. Prior to this, Western Australia was the least industrialised state in mainland Australia, a matter of economic concern to the state government.

Facilities

The harbour facilities from north to south:

Alcoa Jetty

Alcoa Jetty, operated by

Alcoa Alcoa Corporation (an acronym for Aluminum Company of America) is a Pittsburgh-based industrial corporation. It is the world's eighth-largest producer of aluminum. Alcoa conducts operations in 10 countries. Alcoa is a major producer of primary ...

, serves for the export of alumina and the import of caustic deliveries. The jetty is located at

Naval Base A naval base, navy base, or military port is a military base, where warships and naval ships are docked when they have no mission at sea or need to restock. Ships may also undergo repairs. Some naval bases are temporary homes to aircraft that us ...

and accommodates ships unloading bulk caustic soda and loading refined alumina. The jetty is equipped with a belt conveyor system specially designed for the loading of refined bulk alumina and serves the

Kwinana Alumina Refinery Kwinana may refer to: * City of Kwinana, a local government area in Western Australia * Electoral district of Kwinana, an electorate of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly * Kwinana Beach, Western Australia, a suburb in Western Australia * ...

, commissioned in 1963.

Kwinana Bulk Terminal

Kwinana Bulk Terminal, operated by Fremantle Ports, serves for the export and import of bulk cargoes such as coal, gypsum and cement clinker, operating from the KBB2 jetty. The jetty, almost 500 metres long, is home to Kwinana Bulk Berth 2 (KBB2), and facilitates ships loading and unloading bulk products such as cement clinker, mineral sands, silica sands, coal, iron ore, bauxite, gypsum, nut coke, slag and various other commodities. The commodities are stockpiled in sheds and in the open. The jetty has two ship unloaders, No.4, with a minimum rate of 400 tonnes per hour, and No.5, with a minimum rate of 1200 tonnes per hour. The overall conveying system has a maximum rate of 1,500 tonnes per hour and is connected to rail through standard and narrow-gauge to conveyor. The jetty was originally owned by

BHP BHP Group Limited (formerly known as BHP Billiton) is an Australian multinational mining, metals, natural gas petroleum public company that is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was founded ...

as part of its local steel works but sold to Fremantle Ports in 2002. BHP had opened a steel

rolling mill In metalworking, rolling is a metal forming process in which metal stock is passed through one or more pairs of rolls to reduce the thickness, to make the thickness uniform, and/or to impart a desired mechanical property. The concept is simil ...

at Kwinana in 1956 but closed this operation in 1995. Between 1968 and 1982, the company also operated a

blast furnace A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally pig iron, but also others such as lead or copper. ''Blast'' refers to the combustion air being "forced" or supplied above atmospheric ...

at Kwinana. The BHP Kwinana Nickel Refinery opened in 1970.

BP Oil Refinery Jetty

BP Oil Refinery Jetty, operated by BP, services the near-by BP oil refinery facilities. The jetty consists of three berth, No.1, 2 and 3, whereby No. 1 and 2 can hold tankers of a length of up to 229 metres while No, 3 can hold a tanker of up to 274 metres in length.

Kwinana Bulk Jetty

Like the Kwinana Bulk Terminal, the Kwinana Bulk Jetty is operated by Fremantle Ports. Two jetties, KBB3 and KBB4, serve the export and import of various bulk commodities such as sulphur and fertiliser. The two berths, Kwinana Bulk Berths 3 (KBB3) and 4 (KBB4), are designed to accommodate ships unloading both liquid and solid bulk and can accommodate vessels of up to 275 metres length.

CBH Grain Jetty

CBH Grain Jetty, operated by

CBH Group The CBH Group (commonly known as CBH, an acronym for Co-operative Bulk Handling), is a grain growers' cooperative that handles, markets and processes grain from the wheatbelt of Western Australia. History CBH was formed on 5 April 1933, at ...

, functions as Western Australia's primary grain export facility. The single-berth jetty can load grain at up to 5,000 tonnes per hour and has a berth length of 291 metres. The CBH Grain Terminal opened in 1976. In 2016–17, the facility exported 6.7 million tonnes of grains.

Former facilities

BHP Jetty Number 1

Just north of the Kwinana Bulk Terminal, KBB2, lies the derelict BHP Jetty Number 1. Both were once owned by BHP, with jetty number 1 having been disused since the mid-1980s while jetty number 2 was sold by BHP in 2002. The land section of the jetty was demolished in June and July 2021 and only the sea sections of the jetty now remains.

Proposed expansion

The expansion of the Outer Harbour became a contentious issue during the

2017 Western Australian state election The 2017 Western Australian state election was held on Saturday 11 March 2017 to elect members to the Parliament of Western Australia, including all 59 seats in the Legislative Assembly and all 36 seats in the Legislative Council. The eight-a ...

, in which the

Liberal Liberal or liberalism may refer to: Politics * a supporter of liberalism ** Liberalism by country * an adherent of a Liberal Party * Liberalism (international relations) * Sexually liberal feminism * Social liberalism Arts, entertainment and m ...

– WA National government, led by Premier

Colin Barnett Colin James Barnett (born 15 July 1950) is a former Australian politician who was the 29th Premier of Western Australia. He concurrently served as the state's Treasurer at several points during his tenure and had previously held various other po ...

, was defeated in a landslide by the

Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

opposition, led by

Mark McGowan Mark McGowan (born 13 July 1967) is an Australian politician, the 30th premier of Western Australia, and the leader of the Western Australian branch of the Labor Party. McGowan was born and raised in Newcastle, New South Wales. He attended t ...

. The

Perth Freight Link The Perth Freight Link was a proposed $1.9 billion project in Perth, Western Australia to improve the road freight link between Kewdale and Fremantle Harbour. The project was announced by the state government in May 2014, but was cancelled fol ...

, a road freight link between Kewdale and

, was announced by the state government in May 2014, but was cancelled following a change of government. A report by the Western Australian Government Westport Taskforce released in August 2019 proposed five options for the Fremantle Harbour, with two advocating shared container trade between the Inner and Outer ports, and the other three proposing a new stand-alone container port at Kwinana. The preferred option in the report was for the new container port at the Outer Harbour to handle all of the projected 3.8 million twenty-foot equivalent units of container load projected to be the required demand by 2070. At the time of the report, the Inner Harbour handled 700,000 units of a theoretical capacity of 2.1 million, being restricted by road- and rail access in and out of the port. The Outer Harbour option eliminated this restriction but required additional road and rail development. The proposed container facility at the Outer Harbour has raised some environmental concerns. Environmental activists fear that the required dredging of

could release toxins and destroy the sea grass in the sound. It was also feared that, in the maritime environment, it would endanger local

Little penguin The little penguin (''Eudyptula minor'') is a species of penguin from New Zealand. They are commonly known as little blue penguins or blue penguins owing to their slate-blue plumage and are also known by their Māori name . The Australian lit ...

Bottlenose dolphin Bottlenose dolphins are aquatic mammals in the genus ''Tursiops.'' They are common, cosmopolitan members of the family Delphinidae, the family of oceanic dolphins. Molecular studies show the genus definitively contains two species: the common ...

and

Pink snapper The Australasian snapper (''Chrysophrys auratus'') or silver seabream is a species of porgie found in coastal waters of Australia, Philippines, Indonesia, mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and New Zealand. Its distribution areas in the Northern an ...

populations while, on land, it could damage local "

Bush Forever Bush Forever is a Western Australian government initiative and plan, aimed at preserving a "comprehensive, adequate and representative" 10 percent of each vegetation complex on the Swan Coastal Plain within the Perth metropolitan region. Introduced ...

" sites. Another concern were the effects on the quality of water supply to the

Kwinana Desalination Plant Kwinana may refer to: * City of Kwinana, a local government area in Western Australia * Electoral district of Kwinana, an electorate of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly * Kwinana Beach, Western Australia, a suburb in Western Australia * ...

. It also lead to resistance from the

Maritime Union of Australia The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) was a union which covered waterside workers, seafarers, port workers, professional divers, and office workers associated with Australian ports. The MUA was formed in 1993 with merger of the Seamen's Union ...

, MUA, which feared that the new facility would lead to job losses at the Inner Harbour. MUA argued that a new container port was not required for another 15 years, when the Inner Harbour one would reach capacity, and that the AUS$6 billion investment required at Kwinana was economically unnecessary and an environmental disaster.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Westport Taskforce at the Department of Transport website
Fremantle Harbour City of Kwinana East Rockingham, Western Australia