Algeria’s push to turn its coastline into a heavy-industry export engine took a major step forward this week as the Port of Ténès unveiled plans for an external deep-water berth capable of handling 70,000-ton bulk carriers—a pragmatic engineering move aimed at supercharging cement and clinker exports without the multi-billion-dollar price tag of building a brand-new port.
According to Algerian daily Echorouk Online, the Ténès Port Authority (Entreprise Portuaire de Ténès) held a working session on Monday, November 9, to review a feasibility study completed by the state Maritime Studies Laboratory (LEM). Backed by the Ministry of Transport and port holding group Serport, the project calls for constructing a specialized jetty outside the traditional harbor basin to load export-bound cement and clinker while freeing up inner quays for general commercial freight.
For maritime economists and logistics planners, the Ténès blueprint represents high-return infrastructure thinking. Building a greenfield deep-water port from scratch requires billions of dollars in rock breakwaters, dredging, and road networks. By extending an open-pile jetty directly into natural deep water outside Ténès’s existing harbor, engineers reuse current port administration, tugboats, and coastal highway access while eliminating shallow-draft bottlenecks.
Until now, Ténès’s older inner basin restricted exporters to small short-sea vessels carrying between 3,500 and 9,000 tons—sizes only viable for nearby Mediterranean buyers. Jumping to 70,000-ton Panamax bulk carriers slashes freight costs per ton, allowing Algerian clinker and cement to compete across the Atlantic in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the US East Coast, as well as deeper into West Africa.
The project also solves a major operational headache: industrial dust. Clinker is notoriously abrasive and disruptive when loaded inside urban harbor basins, coating neighboring towns and contaminating clean cargo like grains or containers. Replicating the model LEM already deployed at Arzew’s deep-water mineral quays, an external jetty allows engineers to install an enclosed rolling conveyor belt running straight from onshore buffer silos to a telescopic shiploader. Instead of thousands of dump trucks jamming city streets and taking two weeks to load a ship by crane, a sealed conveyor loads 70,000 tons in 24 to 48 hours with near-zero dust.
Because Ténès faces an exposed stretch of coastline vulnerable to northwest winter swells, LEM’s study addresses open-sea safety through targeted wave protection and quick-release mooring systems so tugboats can escort vessels to safe anchorage ahead of storms.
The industrial logic sits just 58 kilometers south along the RN19 highway in Oued Sly, where state-owned GICA operates the massive ECDE Chlef cement complex. With 4.2 million tons of annual capacity across three automated kilns, ECDE Chlef produces far more than local markets can absorb, forcing it to haul much of its 1.5-million-ton export surplus over 200 kilometers west to Oran. Once Ténès’s external berth is built—and potentially linked to Oued Sly’s mainline railway—Chlef’s cement giant will gain a fast, low-cost gateway directly to global oceans.
Sources: Echorouk Online (Nov. 10, 2026); Maritime Studies Laboratory (LEM); GICA / ECDE Chlef.
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