Casablanca Port: $25K Fines for Late Ships

The management of the port of Casablanca has tightened the procedures for monitoring the unloading of ships and the handling of goods, threatening to remove late ships from the dock towards the maritime waiting area, and to impose fines of up to $25,000 per day on violators. The measure, as revealed by Hespress on Saturday, is part of a plan to ease congestion and accelerate trade at Morocco's largest port. Two new discharge control decisions Decision No. DG-86/2026 establishes mandatory minimum rates for unloading grain and feed, while Decision DG-87/2026 establishes a mechanism Escalation of Sanctions: An official electronic notice to the operator. If the performance does not improve within 24 hours, the ship shall be returned to the waiting area. In the event of repeated violations, the operator shall lose the priority of berthing in the future. The new minimum discharge rates at the port of Casablanca Commodity Minimum unloading location Grain 3000 tons per specialized silos handling line Grain 5000 tons per vessel Multi-purpose docks Animal feed 4000 tons per day - The management requires operators to provide adequate equipment To achieve these rates, it is also required to submit 100% of customs receipts and 50% of bills of lading before programming any berth. Container ships will be given priority in berthing according to their length and available capacity, with temporary priority for ships carrying empty containers destined for export. Fines may reach hundreds of thousands of dollars after the end of the contractual grace period, delay fines range between $20,000 and $25,000 per day, and the bill for a grain ship waiting several additional days may reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to sources cited by Hespress, a This threatens to raise the import bill in the near term. This tightening comes at a time when Morocco's exports are recording remarkable growth in some sectors, such as Moroccan lemon exports to Spain, which jumped 10 times , making the speed of unloading goods a decisive factor in the competitiveness of foreign trade. Fears of congestion moving to warehouses In return, professionals warn that accelerating the pace of unloading without keeping pace with the capabilities of trucks and warehouses may not solve the problem of congestion, but only move it from sidewalks to areas Storage within the port and its surroundings, which may render the new procedure ineffective if it is not met by a parallel investment in the logistics infrastructure surrounding the port.