According to a report in the Lebanese newspaper L’Orient le Jour, the CMA CGM president, Jacques Saade, who hails from Lebanon, aims to double the company’s throughput in the Lebanese port.

CMA CGM is the third company worldwide in maritime transportation.

Mr Saade, however, complained about the attitude of the Beirut port authorities. They have given a priority contract to Swiss company MSC, and this contract, he said, “is totally unheard of in international ports” and without any commercial logic. In this day and age, for a ship to wait to unload its cargo can be quite costly: up to some $50,000 a day.

If CMA CGM obtains favourable hours in the Beirut port, up to 24 hours a week, it can double the number of containers it moves to 100,000.

The four cranes on site, due to be expanded by a fifth, can move up to 75 TEUs an hour, against the 80 in Malta and the 120 at Le Havre, the best port in the world.