The port of Koper has commenced work on a near 100 metre berth extension which will raise the length of the container handling quay to just under 700 metres and lift annual capacity from around the million TEU mark to 1.5 million TEU\/yr.<\/p>\n
Yard area will also be expanded by 24,830 square metres. Matching quay and landside container handling equipment will be installed. The project is part of a planned \u20ac235 million port upgrade project which has to-date included dredging and railway construction works.<\/p>\n
\u20ac6 million has been provided by the EU as part of its NAPA4CORE project (the connecting Europe Facility funding instrument). Project completion is scheduled for early 2021. Also integral to Koper building its capacity is the construction of a second rail track along the Divaca \u2013 Koper railway line.<\/p>\n
This is a central part of a scheme also intended to deliver 20 kilometres of new access roads with the overall cost put at in excess of a billion euros. The project is now in the implementation stage with the financing approved in January this year. Getting the financing in place has, however, not been an easy journey. It has been the source of some considerable debate between Slovenian politicians and has seen some setbacks.<\/p>\n
At one stage the Hungarian government committed to contribute \u20ac200 million to the new rail track but with the change of government in Slovenia last year Hungary had a change of heart and turned its attention instead to firming up arrangements with the port of Trieste as a main gateway for its maritime trade.<\/p>\n
Construction works on the new rail track, which combined with the existing track will give the port of Koper a double track connection, are scheduled to take place in the period 2019 \u2013 2025.<\/p>\n
TRIESTE \u2013 SCALING UP<\/p>\n
The port of Trieste is also moving on expansion plans. The Trieste Marine Terminal (TMT), in which MSC has a 45 per cent stake, has an approved plan to raise terminal capacity from the current level of 900,000TEU to 1.2 million TEU\/yr.<\/p>\n
This will involve a 100m quay extension and the addition of new quay cranes, also with the objective in mind of catering for larger vessel sizes than the 14,000TEU maximum that can currently be handled.<\/p>\n
In 2018 TMT achieved a throughput of 626,767TEU, up 14.7% on the previous year. The terminal reports increasing traffic to central and eastern Europe as a major driver of volume with traffic to Germany and Hungary particularly notable with 70 per cent and 130 per cent increases respectively.<\/p>\n
In the background there is also the agreement signed by the Port of Trieste with the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) which a number of parties have speculated may lead to port development.<\/p>\n
Presently the agreement provides for small and medium sized Italian companies to sell products in China and to \u201cfacilitate infrastructure development in central Europe.\u201d This agreement has, however, attracted criticism from western European interests and will no doubt be subject to the vagaries of the ever-changing Italian political scene.<\/p>\n
RIJEKA \u2013 AGCT EXPANSION TRIGGERED<\/p>\n
AGCT, in close cooperation with the Rijeka Port Authority, has drawn up plans for a two-phase dredging scheme. The first phase is fully approved and involves dredging 130m of quay to extend 15-meter depth to a continuous 438 meters of quay, thus enabling the berthing of vessels with a LOA of up to 400m.<\/p>\n
The work will be completed by mid-2020. Financing for the infrastructure works has been provided by the EU and PRA with ICTSI undertaking all the associated necessary investment in quayside and landside handling systems as well as the increased coverage of terminal I.T. systems.<\/p>\n
The second phase development at AGCT will see additional dredging alongside the 438 metres of quay to a depth of 16,5 metres. This project, when implemented, will make AGCT the first terminal in the northern Adriatic able to berth vessels of up to 20,000TEU capacity with a LOA up to 400 metres and beam of 59 metres.<\/p>\n
New Super Post-Panamax cranes will be installed, with an outreach of at least 24 rows, as part of the berth upgrade and complementing this new rubber tyred gantries and prime movers introduced on the landside. Work is also now advanced on upgrading AGCT\u2019s on-dock rail terminal to offer an annual capacity of 360,000TEU\/yr.<\/p>\n
This upgrade will include two new rail mounted gantries over four rail lines and will be completed in the last quarter of 2019. Total yard capacity will rise to 600,000TEU\/yr. Rijeka, like Koper achieved a single digit increase in container volume in 2018.<\/p>\n
AGCT as part of ICTSI, a listed entity, does not release throughput statistics but it is known that the terminal upgrade will provide ample surplus capacity to cater for long-term growth. Koper achieved a total volume of 988,499TEU in 2018, an eight per cent increase, and clearly its expansion plans also provide adequate capacity into the medium term at least.<\/p>\n
VENICE \u2013 AMBITIOUS<\/p>\n
Container traffic at VECON, the PSA subsidiary company operating in the commercial port of Venice, is estimated to be running at around the 350,000TEU mark with available capacity at this terminal put at 420,000TEU.<\/p>\n
Upping annual capacity could be achieved via further equipment installation. There is also the ambitious project launched by VGate Srl for a multi-purpose terminal, with a significant container handling capacity, to be located 2.3km offshore of the port of Chioggia and possessing a direct connection to land.<\/p>\n
The scheme is ambitious to say the least \u2013 many parties believe the economics are simply not workable and the scheme will never see the light of day.<\/p>\n
ENOUGH FOR NOW<\/p>\n
As Table 1 confirms total annual throughput capacity at established container handling platforms in the northern Adriatic will rise by in the order of 40 per cent within the near term \u2013 by end 2025.<\/p>\n
This is a significant uplift in capacity but interestingly is as much about system upgrade \u2013 to accommodate larger vessels and increased rail utilisation \u2013 as catering for traffic increases.<\/p>\n
Trieste stands out as the star performer in terms of achieving positive traffic growth \u2013 double digit for two years running. The majority of players, however, consistently register more modest volume increases and it is apparent that the planned capacity increases at established load centres will be sufficient to cater for demand to end 2025 at least.<\/p>\n
The traditional history of the northern Adriatic is that big numbers have been forecast but the reality of these is that they have never been achieved. There remain good reasons to be conservative in volume forecasting and certainly there is plenty of \u2018food for thought\u2019 when it comes to the proposition of launching entirely new container platforms in the region as mooted with the Zagreb Pier project in Rijeka and the scheme for the new Venice offshore terminal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Established container handling centres in the northern Adriatic \u2013 Koper, Trieste andRijeka \u2013 are all busy adding new capacity while Venice also has an ambitious plan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":762,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-container-cargo-handling"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}