How This Port Became The Largest Loading Port In Australia | Port Hedland | Spark

Australia an island a continent and a country the sixth biggest country in the world with a largest coastline on earth a landmass of over seven and a half million square kilometres Australia lies at the bottom of the globe surrounded by the Pacific Indian and the Southern Oceans isolated beaches border of landscape fast and very from coastal beaches to farming Plains to deserts and snow-capped mountain ranges Australia is divided into states and territories its major cities are contrasted by wide open spaces of Central Australia there are major engineering and mining projects underway in the middle of nowhere and maritime operations exporting Australian products all over the world this is big Australia over three and a half thousand kilometres northwest of Sydney in a remote area in the state of Western Australia lies one of the biggest industrial shipping operations in the world port hedland it's home to one of the biggest ports welcome to the world's biggest bulk port this is the port of Port Hedland [Music] Portland is the world's largest bulk export port but in overall poor throughput tonnage with the 13th largest port in the world [Music] [Music] it's busy its baked and just non-stop [Music] well this is Port Hedland it's the world's biggest bulk port it ships bulk iron ore in these great big boulders that you see behind us because of the sheer volume of iron ore that we shipped we probably had the biggest fleet hanging offshore to be able to load it in one stage on any given day the harbor of Port Hedland facilitates the movement of up to 16 ships that's four thousand ship movements a year it's big and it's getting bigger what we have over here at the port is the the largest export tonnage port in the world and certainly the largest in Australia by a fair margin last year we exported nearly 247 million tonnes of throughput the port that equates to 16 operational berths and certainly a fair bit more under construction alone with dozens of ships park out at sea it's a race to meet a growing demand for iron ore and the world's insatiable appetite for steel the demand is driven by international demand and of course iron ore demand at the moment is significant 97 percent of our total throughput is iron ore exports and that's all been driven by the Asian powerhouse countries China's heavily busy to urban noise and also really investing in roads houses construction manufacturing to actually bring the people out of poverty and that's really where it's going to it's the urbanization of China the trade stuff might not be liquid gold but I tell you what the amount of times we put out it's definitely liquid red gold whatever this demand and whatever Australian iron ore miners you know do things bigger and cheaper and better and have as much iron ore in their backyard as anyone else you know the world is literally your market among the product moved are various materials including salt and manganese but the main export by far is iron ore [Music] within a few hours drive inland a giant open cut iron ore mines Rock is blasted gathered crushed and then sent on its way to the rest of the world to be used in steel and transformed into cars building materials and consumer goods but how do you get hundreds of millions of tons of rock to the rest of the world a key link in the supply chain is the port it all happens here Port Hedland the biggest bulk export tonnage port in the world we're sending on average about seven or eight fully loaded Cape sized ships every day at our current level of 250 million tonnes a year and that will be close to doubling by the time we reach our inner harbor capacity of 495 million tons of you to put that in context the amount of iron ore exported from Port Hedland each year is enough to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground at least once a week every week of the year by 2010 11 which have 200 million tonnes this last financial year we shipped nearly two hundred and fifty million tonnes and in the coming financial year 1213 we expect to ship about three hundred million tonnes of iron ore and other commodity traffic this lucrative red dirt iron ore is delivered by rail or Road to the port here is dumped into a monstrous stockpiles then onto conveyor belts to stack us next it is picked up by giant bucket wheels called reclaimers then on to the conveyor again to make the ship [Music] [Music] night or day there are dozens of bulk carrier ships waiting patiently off the shore of Port Hedland all awaiting their time to berth Marine pilots like Matt Shirley and Pat Condon our expert mariners whose job is the guide ships through challenging waters their knowledge of lengthy waterways is crucial especially at a port like Port Hedland bringing in ships of this size into a port with multiple challenges is a feat for any Marine pilot one mistake here and the port grinds to a standstill Patt prepares for his next task to bring in the Chinese bulk area the young Shanghai to be birthed bloated and sent on its way back to China all in around 30 hours the northwest Australia is renowned for its big tide so that that creates quite a challenge for us we have some of the biggest ships in the world we have tight corners we have narrow channels sometimes the year we have strong winds when you combine all those things there it creates a lot of challenges because they're all put together they're the things we have to deal with it once tugboats are crucial to helping bring vessels in they'll need to use four tugs to bring in the yunjin hi Rodney Triplett is the tug master of RT tough he's already assisted in the departure of the Cape victory we've just released this one and he'll head off the rest away the channel would deploy on board from there you'll hit off the trial take about ten days and turn around and come back again his next mission is to work with Pat Condon to bring in the eunjin hi [Music] [Music] Port Hedland is the highest tonnage port in Australia it sits on the edge of the Indian Ocean in the country's remote northwest it's the heart of the nation's iron ore export firm it's a port with a big history captain Peter headland was one of the first Europeans to explore this isolated area back in 1863 he reported back that the area had great potential for a shipping port port itself has been around since the turn of the century but essentially he rose to prominence from the 1960s when iron ore export was first contemplated when the first berths were set up on the eastern side of the harbour here to start exporting iron ore what captain headland failed to point out there was a huge sandbar blocking the entrance a massive tidal flow the area was in the middle of a cyclone region and the river had a very narrow mouth which made it particularly difficult to navigate in bad weather not the most ideal conditions for building one of the world's biggest shipping ports it is a significantly challenging port from a Mariners perspective the channels quite narrow at its narrowest point only 183 metres wide we regularly bring ships in that a sixty metres beam or sixty metres wide themselves and so it is a challenging port unfortunately you can't pick a port up and move it so you have to learn to manage it there's always been some thought about you know what is the capacity at the port given those sorts of challenges the tidal range the narrowness of the channel the depth of the channel and all those constraints but our maritime boys are on a mission to prove something [Music] [Music] [Music] the reason we use helicopters is that one it's far safer but mainly because it's quicker to get our pilots on takes 15 minutes to drop a pilot off by helicopter where we'll take well over an hour each way if we had to transport the pilots by launch [Music] [Music] the pilot boards 5 miles off the port and then undergoes our briefing with the master and then proceeds inbound ok captain what's your course one 7.17 engine is slow ahead ok thanks captain come to half a head please one of 18 of the port authorities elite breed of Marine pilots is Pat Condon it's his task to guide the ships in safely today's challenge to bring in the bulk carrier known as the young Jin hi the on geun-hye's is a standard size KP about 292 meters long 45 meter beam and is about 180,000 top this might be a standard sized ship for the port but its sheer size and weight is not to be underestimated this ship is big and it is just one of the many vessels arriving at the port the biggest ship that we have come into the port 340 meters Lent overall 60 meters beam that equates to over 250,000 ton of cargo carrying capacity port hedland pilots probably some of the very best in the world Marine pilotage in Port Hedland is definitely a specialized skill it is a challenging port we invest heavily in getting the the best pilots and we train him to the highest degree the Marine officer to get to to become a pilot has to get to his class one spends 15 odd years at sea and then he will come and apply for a role here and spend another further two years training and that training is not just theoretical it's on-the-job training and going through many many stages before he is a fully qualified pilot to operate in this channel and we also provide the the best equipment in terms of tugs that there is anywhere in the world it's quite a task and a very strong learning task in order to get the guys to know this channel of the ships and everything else have been handled through it certainly a highly specialized career path from a marine perspective but also highly valued in a port like this tugs at the same time as Pat takes control of the Chinese vessel tug master Rodney triplet ventures out to make contact by water and our maximum speed is 11.5 knots we need to get up behind him and catch ooh [Music] overseeing the whole operation is the team based in the control tell these guys the eyes and the ears of the hub master in the port in the control tower there's many different aspects of the Port Authority operations land side so the Marine control tower is part of the marine operations and up here is the last line I guess of defense or communications between the ships so in traffic management its to ensure there's public proper traffic separation from the vessels for the safe for the environment safety of personnel on the ships and to facilitate the trade through the port the helicopter away safe voyage thank you for visiting Port Hedland the operators go through specific training which is internationally accredited and in that is a lot of the standard phrasing that you may use on the radio obviously a lot of different cultures come through the port with Chinese and Greek and Indonesian crew and that sort of thing so the cross-cultural sort of language barriers need to be overcome we've made all sorts out there it's quite an interesting job where we get to meet different people from all over the world dealing with foreign cruise there's no room for breakdown in communication don't buy the time up always hitting the paving the line yeah yeah the tides very strong so you must keep tight yeah communication with overseas cruise has its own unique challenges and we have to use our hand signals and face them and use our lips and sign language or drawings to help us with all those tools it's a challenge there it's part of the job if the vessel is departing from the plan and form the pilot okay have you any questions captain no no you agree with you plan you believe treaty a pilot yeah yeah good pilots you think yes good master agrees the vessel is ready yes okay please sign there I'll Pat now has full control of the Chinese vessel steer one five six we don't have command of the ship but we have responsibility to take the Conn but the captain remains responsible and he's got the right to take over from us Pat's next task will be to navigate through one of the most challenging ports in the world he'll need a good operational team behind him in the control tower tugboats and on the wharf and the Chinese captain is putting his faith and his ship in the hands of this expert team [Music] [Music] iein or Giants pre HP and Fortescue other major Heian or exporters currently utilizing the Port Hedland facilities for disguise the company is iron ore exporter loaded its first train in April 2008 we shipped our first ship in May 2008 and we've grown from over that four years from somebody that didn't produce any iron ore to have now produced 57 million tons in a single year and have shipped over 160 million tons of oil over the four years that we've been in operations the morning operation is actually really unique to Australia it's the biggest surface mining operation in the world we bring it off to the market extremely extremely fast getting the iron Autoport is just as complex as shipping it to the world there are two main methods for transporting the valuable load to port the first is by rail the second is by Road we're very proud of is a round system it's the ABS tall rail system in the world it's in the Guinness Book of Records axial loads are 40-ton excellence at the moment and we've got projects to look at what we can do to take it up to 42 ton axial loads so very proud of the rail system we're running and three projects they have the Avs bulk rail system in the world [Music] Lawrence Newman is a fitter at Fortescue strain and loading facility it's amazing to see the tonnage that we get through the average tonnage and we're looking it's about 107 to 110,000 on shift it just blows me away we don't come over here you know it's good [Music] Marine pilot Pat Condon now takes control of the Chinese bulk area and this is when the challenge begins he must navigate the ship through a series of formidable yet often unseen obstacles the yunjin hai is 292 metres long that's nearly two lengths of the MCG 173 metres long or almost as long as the Eiffel Tower is high it is also 45 metres wide the vessel comes in through the channel which is only 180 metres wide at its narrowest point and the trick comes that you have to angle the ship across the tide which means that you've only got somewhere in the region of 40 or 45 metres clearance on either side of the channel so that's quite a tricky maneuver and there's a big sweeping turn as you come into the main entrance of Port Hedland you have to make sure that the pilot and the ship's crew are fully briefed about the manoeuvre that's about to take place and under the escort of the tugs then make that turn and then come into the Inner Harbor if that's not enough to consider the pilots must take tidal flow and clearance into account the one thing that does infect the port is the swell once the swell gets up it does impact our available draft of the ship we have an what we call a dynamic under keel clearance system which works out the physical dimensions of the ship but also the environmental parameters like swell and wind and tide the minimum under keel clearance that we sail ships on under the worst-case scenario can be as little as 25 centimeters so that's the biggest ship in the world going out with that much clearance to the bottom of the ocean so very very challenging with these big vessels you can't afford to make mistakes this area is considered the powerhouse of Australia's economy we jam up this channel I think you could probably find at the state and possibly even Australia with guaranteed depression I mean that's how important this channel in this properties we just started to chase them down man it's just coming to the channel flat-out he's he's full speed at the moment is 12 knots we've only got about 11 half knots so we've we've got all six half thousand horsepower three motors flat out and just try and the reason they keep the speed ups just challenged so narrow over the wind they need to keep the speed up in the steerage he'll eventually back practice the revs off and will be able to catch them up and put a line up on the line arm we're dropping down now at 11 knots and coming down to about 10 knots once we're at 10 knots the tugs can come here and they'll make fast that involves the crew throwing a messenger line down to the Tokra and now we'll tie it on to the big tag line and the crew will drag that line back up put it on their winch and they'll heave the tag line up and put it on the business and then the tugs fast they'll secure it on the tug then I've got a tug available to use to pull or to lift a little portion basically we're just going to sneak right up as close as we can in the crew of the ship we're gonna pass down a messenger line we're going to tie that to where a messenger line and then the chief the real effort really at the big line of we'll check a liner entering the entering the harbor now the pilots going to take the ship all the way into the turning basin use all four tugs and spin around and and then we're going to steam back up to the to the birth and then put it alongside for us we've got to get into position quickly and make them an uber happen and write the four tags wine will make fast pork shoulder on the starboard shoulder on the fo'c'sle right down the back here at hatch out of nine and one sell later in case we lose engines we'll use this one here much if he was to happen to lose steerage or something like that we've become we've become the steerage and control of the ship then so basically we just we're just standing by and waiting till we get in waiting his instructions and Jeff keep your eye on the ball and stayed quite alert all the time some of the tugs going alongside or whatever you can get caught at the wrong spot at the wrong time and the interaction of the ship and the tugs can pull you under the counter and you know all sorts of things I think you've got to think about their big vessels yeah it's a lot of a lot of weight involved so it's we use four four big tugs one of them talks a lot of horsepower takes a lot of effort into anna-marie under watched over by the control tower our reen pilot Pat Condon and the team of tugboat operators have navigated the yunjin high through the mouth of the harbor but the challenge is not over the ship must dock at its allocated berth it's a delicate process any damage here could be costly [Music] on a good day Port Hedland looks as pretty as a picture it's the Pilbara largest town with a population of around 20,000 [Music] in winter it's beautiful you know you get in the evenings of sort of 20 degrees in your days or 30 degrees like we have today it's a fantastic climate but during cyclone season it's something else entirely [Music] storm crops the coast at 10:00 last night packing winds up to 275 kilometres an hour in the mining town of Port Hedland cyclone gorge ripped off roofs mangled fences and pulled down trees and powerlines the region has been declared a natural disaster zone up in the far northwest it tends to get very very hot in the summer and you know you get a lot of cyclones coming through so the port traditionally plans for four or five cyclones a year when we would shut down and that requires a full evacuation of the port and all the vessels of the Anchorage and that could involve their 30 or 40 vessels a tanker and then they sort of 14 or 15 vessels that we normally have in the port so it's it's quite a significant logistics exercise to get all those ports out and a coordinated and safe fashion and then we then close the port in preparation for the cyclone with these cyclones that arrive between November and April they bring a lot of rain with them and when you dig holes in the ground a few hundred metres deep you create massive dams at the board itself it flows bad 12 to 24 hours before cyclones do to get all the big ships out and it opens about 12 to 24 hours after they're all clear in terms of revenue a cyclone presents a setback companies must endure any delay is costly 10,000 pounds an hour and oil price per ton $20 ton that gives you 1.2 million dollars not all the product is brought in by rail some miners utilize trucks dumping at the Port Authorities Utah birth the facility receives on average about two hundred thousand tons of ore a week which equates to two thousand to two thousand two hundred rode trains it's not just iron all we export the material you can see outside the window here the black material is manganese various grades from low high grade fines to low and high grade lumber each of the trucks has a radio frequency identifier so approximately six kilometers from site the system will identify the truck to our control room tell us what trail is coming with what material into which bumpy is gonna do it the obvious place more you'll only receive one trailer time so the road train tips sequentially trailers 1 2 3 4 on top of the hoppers a series of radar and laser sensors which will position the driver and when the trailers in position green traffic light this trailer they don't always get it right sometimes it leaves us 20 tons of mess to clean up overseeing the unload is shift manager Darrell Jenkins [Music] every day is something different as you turn around the slide said a lot of Road chains come through which any loading the or into certain stickers and when on the ground from the trains tippers and truck stockpiles the or now travels along a network of conveyor belts with its final destination being the ships at the port ninety-seven percent of our exports are iron ore and that involves for the smaller players transshipment in by road trains or for the larger players like PHP and Fortescue Metals Group it comes in on a rail system it then gets unloaded from the rail wagons and stockpiled and then reclaimed off that stockpile areas and loaded onto a ship via a ship loader generally each ship takes in excess of about 180,000 tons and that process takes about 36 hours to load a ship and then it departs on the next available high tides for Fortescue the process is continually being refined and engineered for absolute maximum airport at the port itself we've got one car dumper at the moment okay we're getting our second car dumped at the same by our third car dumper we've got to status tomorrow to be getting a third stacker we've got three climates the moment we're getting a third tree-climber we've got to ship lettuce them out we're getting a third ship ladder and all of that takes us to that 155 million tonne Panem capacity to put it in perspective on PHP only done 15 million tons per annum a year in the off ago it took them 40 years to get there we're gonna do it just in just over four years [Music] [Music] Thank You sterling come out square lift up sterling the times are doing all the work now I've got the quarter time here pushing you'll see the forint tape on the starboard side you see them moving out now and he'll lift off and the big tug down arms dragging us turn around with the eunjin high safely through the mouth of the harbour the ship must be turned before it can burn Pat must provide direction to ensure it's a coordinated effort so this is where we're gonna swing swing around quite aggressively kuranes finished they and his job was rising later slide me down and stop me for the turn and now I'm preparing him for the starboard side ready to push into the birth tugs fast thanks captain so we're swung in slack water so it's relatively easy swing today the windows you can see is dropped right off so I was pretty basic turn now all the tags are stopped and I've got the engine going ahead again we're going to come off pinnacle Island uber then we'll stop again and then we'll have the time to push us in nice and gently at the adjoining birth a new system is put to use considered to have radically changed the way the port operates camera tech is a really innovative mooring system that the Port Hedland Port Authority is embraced we have a specific need for that type of system at our Utah point birth because we're limited in the length of the birth that we constructed and therefore we can get much larger ships on the berth by using a suction mooring system that doesn't rely on the traditional mooring lines it's foreseen hydraulically powered vacuum units and currently for the vessel that you see behind me we've got nine units attached approximately with a 50 minute vacuum force which are all powered by the hydraulic power units you see behind it it saves us a great deal of time the vessel can come alongside the berth and be all fasted within five minutes and we can be in a position to low conventionally we'd still be running lines from maybe 45 or 50 minutes long it means we can dismiss our pilots earlier and also save time with totes another issue for their use is the safety we don't operate lines under tension on this berth with the high tidal range here in Port Hedland there is a risk that lines will snap in the high tension we don't run this risk and obviously no but the people and under risk of being injured by passing lines the pad itself isn't isn't too large that the force generated within the seal is certainly significant I really can't describe to you what I imagined being sucked by 20 tons of back you can feel like infinitely more powerful than a Dyson meanwhile the yunjin high approaches the bird they just give him some weight as he's going ahead so you can still have still have a potion and steerage over he's rudder or to get the steerage but we're also trying to slow him down at the same time because he's got so big he's got so much momentum on takes a lot to stop him the ships engine room is their powerhouse of these massive bulk carriers dead slow astern he's got a set of leads up I find sure that he's lining up for his approach he wants to make sure IVA is on that line needs to speed to get there in steerage but he also doesn't want to overshoot the runway because you know you'll end up on the beach if you go too far and see our bridge marker here then we come to the red line so we've got to get it come down there and get on to that bridge mark hi when you like sterling liftoff half sterling tops of a lifetime okay captain ship is all fast good ship help thank you very much for your assistance okay have a good stay okay with the maneuver safety first of course thank you very much bye bye pet departs the ship a job well done but his days not over over the course of his shift he'll need to bring several more ships in through this challenging Harbor what is the queue [Music] [Applause] [Music] at Port Hedland isn't all about exports to run a port in a region you have to bring in goods the scale of the export activity in in Port Hedland and the Pilbara in general means that for every X hundred million tons that we put out of the port we've got to import the basics to keep that industry moving so it's not only just the ability to load ships and the ship loaders and all about it but behind that don't forget you're going to have to have stockyards and reclaimer Xand stackers and behind that again you're going to have to have trains rail infrastructure we do a lot of imports of fuel things like ammonium nitrate project cargo cement that equates to about one to two percent of our exports come back in an import to service the whole town and the industry that sits behind the whole Pilbara boom that we're having at the moment [Music] some of the other huge demands that we're getting are for industrial tourism the amount of cruise ships that are knocking on the door saying you know we have a bunch of people from around the world that want to come and see the world's biggest port at work and when can you accommodate us so there's trade knocking on your door and from our perspective that's a fantastic thing that helps bring people into the community spends money in the community and shows the integration of the port and the town of Port Hedland the loading of iron ore has begun on the yunjin high in 24 to 36 hours 180,000 tons of oil will be evenly distributed onto the vessel after it's unloaded from trucks or trains or travels hundreds of meters on a conveyor to a ship loader [Music] an operator spends an entire shift loading and balancing the vessel each of the ships takes about hundred seventy to 250,000 tons of oil the oil is about 60% iron content when we look at the Sydney Harbour Bridge to put this in perspective the Sydney Harbour Bridge 50,000 tons of steel to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge when you take the iron content in the iron ore into account each of these ships takes it out between 2 and off and 3 Sydney Harbour bridges every time it sells out of this port [Music] reporte skill we've broken quite a few records over the last year we broke the annual record for the financial year of 1112 which was nearly two hundred and forty six million tonnes we broke the monthly record back in May which was twenty three point two million tonnes and we've recently also broken the largest tonnage on a single tide which was a million and forty thousand tonnes on a single tide which involved sailing of six vessels the last week we broke another record it was the single biggest volume on a single ship going out through our channel so two hundred and forty-eight thousand three hundred and sixty six tonnes on a on a single bolt carrier bhp and us sort of play a bit of tug-of-war and that we are a diet we want it back and so that's always a little bit of healthy competition when the valuable cargo is loaded the fully laden yeongjin high drops around a massive nine meters more below the water's surface and then it's time for the yunjin high to set sail once again Marine pilot Matt Shirley leads the operation to ensure the fully laden bulk carrier safely leaves the harbor [Music] under the watchful eye the tugs and marine pilot the eunjin hi adventures off into the ocean beyond two weeks later it's it's off the coast of China ready for unloading and then the whole process starts again once we finish loading the ship and we send analysis over to our customers we'll get both payment then once it's unloaded up in China they will do samples and confirm that what we've seen them is what we said it is and what final payment will happen in it so yeah it's it's big money bleh not any button checks everything is big it's big money we're spending to get it out there but also the revenue we're getting from its booth [Music] [Applause] [Music] within five years we're gonna welcome to more major players to the port and that will involve another four or five Cape size berths are opening the construction will allow a further anywhere between 200 and 400 million tons of iron ore to go out to sea and when you look at it you think this is just huge the sort of construction we're doing in the Pilbara it's actually bigger than this this time mountain river scheme and if you think that that changed Australia and and that kept the economy going that's really what's happening in the polar environment the pabre is really keeping the Australian economy annoyed nothing we do is small everything is big the ships are big the equipment this big our people are moving down that's every day if this is spectacular then I'd wait a couple of years and come back again [Music] [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 136,254

Rating: 4.803226 out of 5

Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, Learning, How To, education, documentary, factual, mind blown, construction, building, full documentary, 2017, 2016, 2015, full, space documentary, bbc documentary, Science documentary, port hedland, port hedland western australia, port hedland australia, port hedland 2019, bulk export, fishing port hedland western australia

Id: 5aEk6ccHV98

Length: 46min 48sec (2808 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 13 2020