OPC Puerto Cortés

CU Phosco Lighting's Lowering Masts Enhance Safety at Operadora Portuaria Centroamericana's Expansion Project in Puerto Cortes

Operadora Portuaria Centroamericana, or OPC for short, is the Honduran subsidiary of International Container Terminal Services, Inc (ICTSI). It is located at Puerto Cortes, on Honduras's Atlantic coast - the biggest port in Central America.

OPC has continuously increased the port's productivity and competitiveness, becoming the first choice of ports in the region, generating both development and growth in Honduras.

Puerto Cortés now operates 1 million TEUs annually (20-foot equivalent units).

2018 was the start of a period of investment and expansion for OPC, with a commitment of 624 million dollars over 14 years. The results included a new quay, infrastructure, equipment and state-of-the-art technology.

As part of the new development, OPC required several high masts for CCTV, lighting and WIFI.

Andrew Southgate, Export Manager, CU Phosco Lighting, explains, "OPC is a subsidiary of ICTSI of the Philippines, with whom we have had a relationship for many years, supplying masts and floodlights to their ports in the Philippines and Madagascar.

In 2019 OPC embarked on a major expansion project. We worked closely with their project team to design masts suitable for high local wind speeds."

In total, we supplied 31 raising and lowering high masts at two different heights: 23m and 30m. One of our engineers visited the site to assist OPC with the installation of the new masts.

Our solution offered ease of installation and maintenance with our simple, reliable and safe raising and lowering system. This system allows the lantern carriage to be lowered to ground level for luminaire installation and maintenance, thus avoiding any work at elevated heights.

Andrew continues, "We also supplied our bespoke CCTV and WIFI mounting systems. These systems allow the client to have their CCTV and WIFI equipment mounted on the mast shaft and still be able to lower the ring without having to disconnect them."

The overall solution ticked all the boxes for OPC, a safe and reliable mobile lantern carriage to avoid work at an elevated height and no need to turn off critical CCTV and WIFI during the lowering operation.