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Mersin

Türkiye's largest Mediterranean port, on a narrow coastal plain with the Taurus standing behind it. The reason there is a company here at all.

Looking along the container quay at Mersin at first light: gantry cranes receding into the distance, the ship beyond, the yard on the right.
The eastern container quay at 05:40, from the apron.
340 mquay face
14.5 malongside
4ship-to-shore gantries
55 mcrane outreach

02 The cranes

Thirty metres of gauge, fifty-five of reach.

A ship-to-shore gantry runs on two rails 30.48 m apart — a hundred feet, because the first ones were American. The boom reaches 55 m out over the water, which sets the widest ship the berth can work: at 2.44 m a row, that is twenty-two containers across.

Lift height is 40 m above the rail, so the crane can reach the top box of a stack nine high on a ship that is riding light. When a crane is not working a ship its boom is raised to about 80°, which is what the parked one in these photographs is doing — otherwise the next ship to arrive would take it off.

Looking up the boom of a ship-to-shore gantry from the water: the A-frame, the forestays, and the spreader hanging from its four ropes.
The spreader hangs on four ropes from a trolley that runs the length of the boom. It grabs the four corner castings and nothing else.

03 Behind the quay

The yard, the sheds and the siding.

Stacks four and five high, with lanes wide enough for a straddle carrier. Behind them 88,000 m² of warehousing, bonded and free-zone, and our own customs desk.

A rail siding runs into the terminal, so a box can go from the ship's crane onto a wagon without touching a road. That is where the Tehran and Middle Corridor trains are made up.

Since 2024 the berth has shore power at 6.6 kV. A ship at the quay shuts down her auxiliaries; over a 26-hour call that is roughly 34 tonnes of fuel oil not burned inside the city.

The container yard behind the quay at Mersin, blocks of boxes in many liveries stacked four and five high.
Boxes from every line in the trade. Ours are the petrol blue ones.