THE Italian government and its port authority are reviving container facilities in the Port of Taranto on the heel of the Italian boot after a long period of decline in the face of regional competition.
Taranto Port Authority has now laid the "last foundation stone" of the new logistics platform in the port.
Hong Kong's Hutchison Port Holdings withdrew earlier this year after container volumes fell from 892,000 TEU in 2006 to 148,500 TEU in 2014.
The new infrastructure - that covers nearly 150,000 square metres - is a model of integrated platform of a unique intermodal centre, that allows goods to be transferred between road, rail and sea transport, said the port authority.
With the logistics platform being completed - after the investment of EUR37.5 million (US$42.3 million) by the concessionaire - the Port of Taranto will be equipped with a new logistics services.
It will have goods sheds, refrigerated warehouses and other facilities for logistics operations, as well as a rail yard connecting European national road and rail networks.
Taranto Logistica SpA has been entrusted with management of the logistics platform for 30 years and will build operate and transfer the logistics park in the Port of Taranto, enhancing five important strategic port projects amounting to EUR219 million.
Construction will follows timeline with the dock road being built by July 2016, the extension of Pier IV and the dock on the westward of Pier IV by April 2018 together with the containment tank for mud from dredging operations.
"Thanks to the forthcoming launch of the logistics platform, it takes the shape of a wide-ranging plan to make the port of Taranto an intermodal and logistics hub not exclusively linked to transshipment, but to import export operations projected to be 20 per cent of the total traffic of the terminal," said the port authority statement.
This will change the image and efficiency of the port, to the benefit of traffic diversification and so to get the label of "third-generation port", said the port authority.
PORTS
21 September 2015 - 06:26
Taranto Port hopes to revive its fortunes as logistics hub
THE Italian government and its port authority are reviving container facilities in the Port of Taranto on the heel of the Italian boot after a long period of decline in the face of regional competition.
PORTS
21 September 2015 - 06:26
Born again Taranto Port hopes to revive its fortunes as logistics hub
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