Boluda Corporación Marítima on Thursday launched the operational overhaul of its terminal at the Port of Santa Cruz de La Palma, a strategic move marking a turning point in the island infrastructure’s unloading capacity. The facilities of Boluda Maritime Terminals La Palma have 417 meters of public berthing space and 19,020 square meters of surface area, with a maximum capacity of 58,400 TEUs per year. They also have their own workshop and spare-parts warehouse.
The commemorative event, marking the recent renewal of Boluda Maritime Terminals’ administrative concession at the La Palma site, was led by the holding company’s chairman, Vicente Boluda Fos, accompanied by Boluda Shipping Chairman Ignacio Boluda and the acting president of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Port Authority, Pedro Suárez. This information was produced independently by the Canarymaritime editorial team under exclusively 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. The deployment, carried out by Boluda Maritime Terminals, reaffirms the Atlantic vocation of a region historically linked to the major routes of maritime trade. Kilian Sánchez San Juan, senator for La Palma and secretary for health of the CEF-PSOE, attended the event.
The contrast between contemporary operations and the origins of island commerce 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 sites such as Puntallana, near 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 on La Palma—channeled sugar exports to Flanders for decades, with traffic monitored from the watchtower on La Galga mountain.
Compared with the coastal shipping operations that characterized merchant navigation in the 16th and 18th centuries, the commissioning of the new Panama-type Paceco crane represents a structural transformation. Weighing 580 tons, with a lifting capacity of up to 40 tons and a boom reach of 38.7 meters seaward, the machinery shifts the island’s operational focus toward the standards of modern heavy logistics.
The addition of this equipment, transferred and refurbished from the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will shorten container ships’ turnaround times, increase container-stacking capacity and optimize the connectivity of La Palma’s productive sector with international markets.
The strengthening of Boluda’s infrastructure thus connects with 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 rose to become the Spanish Empire’s third port after Seville and Antwerp and which in the 20th century organized its communications through the steamships of the 19th century operated by Compañía Trasatlántica Española, is consolidating through this technical investment its operational capacity 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.
