Port Kembla, a suburb of Wollongong, is a seaport and one of Australia’s largest industrial complexes. Located almost 75 kilometers southwest of Sydney, it is one of Australia’s four major seaports. Like the Port of Newcastle, Port Kembla concentrates on the movement of raw materials for its industries.

In 1770, Captain James cook visited what is now Port Kembla. What is now Port Kembla’s inner harbor was later visited by explorers George Bass and Matthew Flinders. But Port Kembla did not have a natural harbor.

The Mount Kembla Coal and Oil Company built a railroad from its mine to the coast so that it could ship coal. The company built a jetty on the coast and named it Port Kembla in 1883. A significant volume of coal was being exported from the Port Kembla jetty by the 1890s, and a plan for developing a deep water port there developed.

The Port Kembla Harbour Act was passed in 1898 establishing the port and funding construction of breakwaters. The two breakwaters that were built form the Outer Harbor today.

In the late 1920s, Hoskins Steelworks was located there, and the port began to develop. Many jetties were constructed for loading coal, and new jetties were added for the transport of steel and steel-manufacturing materials.

These large cargoes demanded bigger vessels, and a second construction era for Port Kembla in the 1970s with the addition of product berths and dredging a deeper harbor. Today, the port contains facilities to support the movement of coal, steel, grains, bulk liquids, oil, and a variety of products.

Although Port Kembla has traditionally been a port for handling bulk cargoes like iron ore, grain, and coal, it is undergoing major expansions to add general, breakbulk, and containerized cargoes. It has an advantage, being the closest port to southwest Sydney. With $5.5 billion in trade passing through the port each year, Port Kembla is a major player in the Illawarra regional economy, contributing $418 million each year and providing 3.5 thousand jobs.

Australian Amalgamated Terminals is a multi-user facility providing facilities and support for the stevedoring industry. The Port Kembla facility offers three berths and is adding a fourth berth and wharf extension. The terminal area has a 15 thousand square meter storage building and two 2200 square meter sheds for containers, breakbulk, and vehicles.

BlueScope Steel operates the only wide plate steel mill in Australia at its Port Kembla Steelworks. Recently modernizing its facilities, BlueScope Steel exports about 11 million tons of coal and coke each year.

Port Kembla Gateway, a privately-leased berth, handles bulk and breakbulk cargoes like copper concentrate, steel products, pulp and saw logs, fertilizers, and clinker. The facility includes about four thousand square meters of storage sheds for a variety of dry- and brealkbulk goods. Major products exported through Port Kembla Gateway include copper concentrate, coal tar, clinker, steel products, ammonium sulphate, and scrap steel. Major imports include sodium sulphate, fertilizers, steel pipe, gypsum, bauxite, and soda ash.

The Port Kembla Coal Terminal serves two of the country’s richest coalfields. The quality of the coking coal produced by the mines is prized by international steelmakers. A consortium of coal producers operates the Port Kembla Coal Terminal which can handle any size of cargo from 166 thousand ton bulk carriers to 5 thousand ton barges.

The Port Kembla Grain Terminal, located in the Inner Harbor, is operated by Grain Corp, but the wharf structures are available to other users. Operating since 1989, the grain terminal includes 30 gas-tight self-emptying steel bins, and it has the southern hemisphere’s fastest ship-loading capacity for all grain terminals. The Port Kembla Grain Terminal handles all types of grains including wheat, maize, barley, sorghum, legumes, oats, and oilseed. The Terminal has storage capacity for 520 thousand tons of grain.