The Panama Canal’s new locks will probably not be ready for their scheduled opening in October 2014, but will be ready for a trial run by a vessel in December, said Jorge Quijano, the engineer in charge of building the canal’s third set of locks.
The change in the opening date of the new locks is caused by the inability of the consortium that is building the new locks, Grupo Unidos por el Canal, to meet its contractual requirements for the concrete mix for the locks, which delayed the laying of the concrete from January until July of last year. The concrete has to last at least 100 years, but GUPC could not make concrete that met that standard until the canal authority brought in an outside expert to show them how to make it.
Most industry observers had not expected the new locks to be in full commercial operation until 2015, but the three-month postponement of the target date for their opening is necessarily a disappointment for Zubieta, who has been saying all along that the locks would be ready in October 2014.