THE subsidiary of International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) in Croatia has welcomed a new weekly intermodal service, “improving the port’s position as the Northern Adriatic Gateway for Central and Southeast Europe,” a company official said on Wednesday.
Adriatic Gate Container Terminal (AGCT), which operates the Port of Rijeka, has started servicing the Cosco-operated Rijeka Land Sea Express, a new vessel that connects Rijeka and Piraeus via sea and rail, making transit periods faster.
“We would like to extend our gratitude to all the stakeholders involved for their cooperation and professionalism in this start-up, as well as their continuous support for this project which has strongly positioned Rijeka port and traffic route as the south entrance for Far East to Central Europe trade,” Emmanuel Papagiannakis, AGT chief executive, said in a statement.
He noted that the express project has strengthened Cosco’s position in the existing market, as well as opened new ones: 65 block trains were transported to and from Hungary since March 2019; 10 to and from Slovakia; and 10 to and from Czechia. Overall, Cosco throughput via Rijeka increased by 30 percent since the start of the project.
ICTSI plans to expand its Croatian port through a two-phase dredging scheme of 130 meters of quay over its Berths 1 and 2. This will make the port the first terminal in the northern Adriatic to have a capacity to berth vessels of up to 20,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), with an overall length of 400 meters and beam of 59 meters.
AGCT recently deployed new quay cranes, rubber tired gantries and prime movers. It is currently being developed to have a total yard capacity of 600,000 TEUs per year.
