Boluda Corporación Marítima launched the operational overhaul of its terminal at the Port of Santa Cruz de La Palma on Thursday, a strategic move marking a turning point in the island’s unloading capacity. The facilities of Boluda Maritime Terminals La Palma have 417 meters of public berth and 19,020 square meters of surface area, with a maximum capacity of 58,400 TEUs per year. They also include an in-house workshop and spare-parts warehouse.
The commemorative event, celebrating the recent renewal of Boluda Maritime Terminals’ administrative concession at the La Palma site, was led by holding company chairman Vicente Boluda Fos, alongside Boluda Shipping chairman Ignacio Boluda and acting chairman of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Port Authority Pedro Suárez. This information was produced independently by the editorial team at Canarymaritime under strictly editorial criteria, without commercial compensation or any affiliation with the entities mentioned.
The Port of Santa Cruz de La Palma is therefore experiencing a decisive milestone in the modernization of its maritime infrastructure with the official inauguration of the island’s first STS (ship-to-shore) gantry crane, an operational deployment by Boluda Maritime Terminals that reaffirms the Atlantic vocation of a geography historically linked to major maritime trade routes. La Palma senator and secretary of health of the CEF-PSOE, Kilian Sánchez San Juan, attended the event.
The contrast between contemporary operations and the origins of island trade highlights the qualitative leap in regional logistics. In the 16th century, the island’s port activity was concentrated not only in the capital but also in enclaves such as Puntallana, beside the Barranco Hondo de Nogales. That coastal roadstead — identified by the Casa de la Contratación of Seville in 1572 as one of only two recognized berthing points in La Palma — channelled sugar exports to Flanders for decades, with traffic monitored from the watchtower on La Galga mountain.
Compared with the coastal shipping operations that characterized commercial navigation in the 16th and 18th centuries, the commissioning of the new Panama-type Paceco crane represents a structural transformation. Weighing 580 tonnes, with a lifting capacity of up to 40 tonnes and a boom outreach of 38.7 meters toward the sea, the machinery brings the island’s operational hub in line with the standards of modern heavy logistics.
The addition of this equipment, which was transferred and refurbished from the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will shorten container ship turnaround times, increase cargo-stowage capacity and optimize the connectivity of La Palma’s productive sector with international markets.
The strengthening of Boluda’s infrastructure is thus rooted in the capital port’s long maritime tradition, protected by the bay and the Risco de la Concepción. The roadstead of Santa Cruz de La Palma, which in the 16th century became the third port of the Spanish Empire after Seville and Antwerp and which in the 20th century organized its communications through the 19th-century steamships of the Compañía Trasatlántica Española, is consolidating its operational capacity through this technical investment to meet the demands of the contemporary supply chain.
The article From Sugar to Boluda’s Expansion: La Palma Redefines Its Role in the Atlantic was first published on canarymaritime.com.
