TRIESTE – Apm Terminals, a Maersk Group company, will manage the new container terminal in the Port of Rijeka. The management will be carried out in participation with the Croatian company Enna Logic, specialized in road transport, which will have 49% of the shares.
The Board of Directors of the Port Authority of Rijeka has thus decided to formalize the tender assignment after only one offer was registered last May 11 for the Zagreb Deep Sea terminal.
The Authority considered that the offer contained all the necessary elements following the requirements of the tender documents. Apm terminals and Enna Logic undertake to build the required infrastructure with the complete equipment of the Zagreb Deep Sea container terminal in two different phases (280 meters of the pier and related equipment). The concessionaires will have to guarantee traffic of 1 million TEU for the first two years of activity (probably starting from the first months of 2024) and 500 thousand TEU a year for the following eight years. The annual amount due will be 2 million euros for each year of concession, besides a part tied to the revenues.
At the end of December 2020, the same Port Authority had cancelled the tender which had seen, in addition to the offer of Apm Terminals and Enna Logic, that one of an association between Ningbo Zhoushan Port Company Limited (70%), Tianjin Port Overseas Holding Limited (20%) and China Road and Bridges Corporation (10%).
Regarding this decision, the hypothesis was raised that the pressure from the US and the EU to prevent the infrastructure of the North Adriatic from ending up in Chinese hands convinced the Croatian government.
Now the bet of the Port of Rijeka, which in the next few years could become a strong competitor of Trieste and Koper, shifts to the creation of railway connections capable of supporting the planned movement of Teu.
Meanwhile, despite the challenges of the global pandemic, during 2020, Adriatic Gate Container Terminal (AGCT) reached a significant milestone surpassing 300,000TEU and setting a new record annual volume. Following 20% growth in 2019, AGCT grew a further 12% in the 2020 year to date, driven by a 30% increase in rail volumes.