Kaliningrad mystery
Once again, Kaliningrad government announces the obtaining of an investor for construction of a port, the passenger port this time. Yet, the investor has not been named again. Meanwhile, regional players of the port sector say it is necessary to build a deepwater cargo port as mainland Russia experts consider this idea to be senseless.
Mysterious investor
An investor has been found for the project on construction of a passenger and yacht port in the Pionersky district of the Kaliningrad region, IAA PortNews was told at the press center of the region’s Ministry of Infrastructure Development. The source does not name the investor but says the agreement is supposed to be signed in September 2014 at the Sochi Forum. According to unconfirmed information of the media that could be MSC Cruises which guarantees passenger flow of 75,000 persons per season with a prospect of 400,000 passengers.
According to earlier reports, a cruise terminal was planned for the construction in the Pionersky district by the World Football Championship 2018. In autumn 2013 it was estimated at RUB 5 bln. The project was supposed to be financed by the federal resources. The terminal with 1 or 2 berths was to accept the largest cruise ships. “We believe there is no reason to build a terminal not able to handle the most modern ships of the appropriate size,” Aleksei Klyuneyev, Deputy Minister for Infrastructure Development of the Kaliningrad region told journalists a year ago. However, it is not clear what is to be done with the terminal after the Championship. Kyuneyev himself used to say that the project is not interesting for the business.
Later, in 2014 a proposal came on the two-phase construction of a deepwater complex. The first phase implied the construction of an international passenger terminal with a yacht marina in the Pionersky district. It was considered reasonable to build berths for handling cruise and ferry vessels with total capacity of up to 1 mln passenger per year.
The second phase was associated with the construction of a deepwater cargo port comprising container, liquid bulk, ro-ro and general cargo terminals in the Yantarny district.
Meanwhile, amid the latest geopolitical events it is not clear if Russia to host the World Championship 2018 at all and how many participants and viewers are expected if it takes place here. Who will be serviced by the cruise terminal after the event and will Kaliningrad be able to attract sufficient number of cruise tourists is an open question.
Another open question is the cargo flow to pass the above cargo terminals. According to the statement of the Kaliningrad authorities, they should compete with the ports of Gdansk (Poland) and Klaipeda (Lithuania) for transshipment however this idea was frequently criticized by experts as we wrote earlier >>>> .
As early as in 2012, Russian Government acknowledged it to be unreasonable to build a deepwater container hub in the Kaliningrad region. The resources were redirected to the construction of federal infrastructure facilities at port Bronka in Saint-Petersburg.
A year ago, representatives of the regional government announced that they had found an investor for the construction of a new deepwater cargo port in Kaliningrad. Yantarny and Pionersky were considered among the possible locations. The investments were estimated at RUB 36.6 bln. The project was to be implemented through private-public partnership. Later local media named Gazprom as the possible investor with LNG as a possible cargo. However, the story “faded” and came to nothing.
Vitaly Chernov