Historically, the northern Italian port of Trieste has played a role as a cargo gateway for central Europe, including Austria and southern Germany. However, despite the substantial transit time and cost savings available on a route such as that between China and Germany, this potential has never been fully realised.<\/p>\n
The same may be said of Luka Koper, although its transit cargo business has increased very strongly in recent years but to the point that congestion is now being experienced at certain times of the year. Its capacity to expand further is also limited.<\/p>\n
What Luka Koper has proved is that with new investment in modern cargo handling facilities and integrated thinking on landside issues, including running efficient rail services, port hinterlands can quite easily be extended.<\/p>\n
This is what Rijeka in Croatia is planning to do and the more than E30m spent over the past two and a half years, principally on adding a second berth at the Adriatic Gate Container Terminal (AGCT), is key to this approach.<\/p>\n
It follows Manila-headquartered International Container Terminal Services Inc securing a 25-year operating concession for the facility in 2011. ICTSI (51%) works in a joint venture with Luka Rijeka, the port authority, and the partners have committed to investing another E65m over the next 20 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may be the new kid in town, but we have very ambitious plans for AGCT and that is to help develop Rijeka as the new gateway for south and central Europe,\u201d says Phillip Marsham, chief executive of AGCT.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kitted out<\/strong> <\/p>\n The facility\u2019s new 320m quay, which has depths alongside of 14m, and back-up yard opened in July and is serviced by two new post-panamax ship-to-shore gantry cranes (can extend across 18 rows of containers) and six rubber-tyred gantry cranes. It more than doubles the capacity of AGCT to about 750,000 teu per year, but most importantly it allows the terminal to process fully-loaded post-panamax ships for the first time. The draft alongside berth one is only 11.5m.<\/p>\n The work also involves the construction of a new gate complex, which will fully meet EU requirements (Croatia joined the EU on July 1, 2013), and a significant expansion of the terminal\u2019s rail yard. Both projects will be completed by the end of 2013 at which time the rail yard will be capable of handling 360,000 teu a year.<\/p>\n Mr Marsham says that productivity levels have improved on all fronts and that a further \u201cscale up\u201c will occur when the new gate becomes fully operational.<\/p>\n He sees this as being important in attracting new services to the terminal as it saves shippers\/consignees and ocean carriers\u2019 money as cargo is delivered faster and vessels are turned around more quickly.<\/p>\n The expanded rail capacity is a critical element of the port\u2019s plan to become a southern and central European gateway and not just a national port. Since November 2012, regular train services to\/from Serbia and Hungary have been operating and, with power supply issues resolved on the latter route, non-stop and uninterrupted rail services are available.<\/p>\n Mr Marsham says: \u201cWe are much closer to cities such as Budapest, Vienna, Belgrade and Munich than Benelux and German ports and the shorter sea route from Asia means a six-day sailing time saving in most cases.\u201d<\/p>\n While he forecasts that Croatia will remain Rijeka\u2019s largest market, Marsham sees that country\u2019s share declining from over 50% currently to 32% in 2016. In contrast, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia will become relatively more important.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n On track<\/strong> <\/p>\n Mr Marsham is also confident about the longer-term development of a Baltic-Adriatic rail freight corridor.<\/p>\n He explains: \u201cICTSI\u2019s unique access to both the Baltic and Adriatic seas with marine container terminals in Rijeka and Gdynia will assist Croatia in becoming a major actor in the development of the corridor. Rijeka is 2,000 nautical miles nearer the Baltic from Asia and the Middle East than sailing via northern Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Marsham stresses that AGCT will fully support and back the Croatian Government\u2019s rail liberalisation and investment programmes as well as its partner\u2019s project to develop an off-dock terminal at Skrljevo. He views such schemes as helping to generate more cargo for the terminal.<\/p>\n But AGCT needs to attract more ocean carriers and\/or encourage existing callers to load\/discharge more cargo. Current berthing occupancy, for instance, is only 35%.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a number of initiatives that we hope will result in lines scheduling Rijeka as a first port of call in the northern Adriatic region while also using us for more of their transhipment cargo,\u201c he says. \u201cWe are in a good position to handle cargo for Italian ports such as Venice, Ravenna and Ancona and eastern Adriatic ports, including Split, Ploce, Bar and Durres.\u201d<\/p>\n With the new investment in place and an effective network of rail services evolving, Rijeka appears well placed to exploit the opportunities afforded by the Balkan market and beyond.<\/p>\n Mr Marsham concludes: \u201cWith our new terminal and handling equipment, expanded yard, increased rail capacity and closer distance to the Hungarian border, plus Croatia\u2019s admission to the EU, we can offer shipping lines a clear first-port-of-call advantage and their customers faster transit times to key markets, such as Budapest . We can save the shipping lines a day on their voyages and significant costs too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ports located in the northern Adriatic Sea are keen to expand their roles as gateways for the Balkans. Aidan Grange reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":8914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-8913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8913","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=8913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8913"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=8913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n AGCT’s container traffic<\/strong><\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Origin\/destination<\/td>\n 2013<\/td>\n Share<\/td>\n 2016 <\/td>\n Share <\/td>\n Growth 2013-16<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Croatia<\/td>\n 80,070<\/td>\n 51.0%<\/td>\n 93,760<\/td>\n 32.0%<\/td>\n 17.1%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Serbia<\/td>\n 43,960<\/td>\n 28.0%<\/td>\n 87,900<\/td>\n 30.0%<\/td>\n 100.0%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Bosnia Herzogovina<\/td>\n 15,700<\/td>\n 10.0%<\/td>\n 23,440<\/td>\n 8.0%<\/td>\n 49.3%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Hungary<\/td>\n 6,280<\/td>\n 4.0%<\/td>\n 52,740<\/td>\n 18.0%<\/td>\n 739.8%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Slovakia<\/td>\n 4,710<\/td>\n 3.0%<\/td>\n 17,580<\/td>\n 6.0%<\/td>\n 273.2%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Austria<\/td>\n 4,710<\/td>\n 3.0%<\/td>\n 14,650<\/td>\n 5.0%<\/td>\n 211.0%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Other<\/td>\n 1,570<\/td>\n 1.0%<\/td>\n 2,930<\/td>\n 1.0%<\/td>\n 86.6%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Total<\/td>\n 157,000<\/td>\n <\/td>\n 293,000<\/td>\n <\/td>\n 86.6%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Notes: All figures in teu unless otherwise expressed<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Source: AGCT<\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"