Belawan
Coordinates: 3 ° 47 ' N , 98 ° 41' E
Belawan is a port city in the Indonesian province of Sumatra Utara (North Sumatra) on the northeast coast of the island of Sumatra . It is located on the Sungai Belawan, the mouth of the Deli River in the Strait of Malacca , about 20 km north of the megacity of Medan . Belawan's port is the largest in Indonesia outside of Java .
The port was built in 1890 to handle tobacco from the railroad to ships. It was expanded for the first time in 1907. With the expansion of the rubber and palm oil plantations in North Sumatra, the handling of goods in the port also increased. In the 1920s the port was expanded and in 1938 Belawan was the largest port in the Dutch East Indies , based on the value of the cargo. After Indonesia's independence, the turnover of goods dropped drastically and could only reach the old level in the 1960s. In 1985 a new container terminal was built that handles one fifth of Indonesia's container throughput. The main cargo handled are rubber, palm oil, tea and coffee .
There are regular ferries from Belawan to Penang in Malaysia and Satun in Thailand .
