Liepaja Port in Latvia plans to build two modern container terminals by 2017.
Located in the Baltic Sea Region, the Port of Liepaja is part of the Liepaja Specialised Economic Zone (SEZ), where companies can receive considerable tax relief.
Liepaja SEZ Investment and Marketing Department head Ivo Kolins, was cited as saying in a report by Riga, Latvia-based Baltic course.com that the port does not currently have a terminal suitable for handling containerised cargo. Last year, 7,600 containers were handled at Liepaja Port.
"We are working actively at the moment and there are two modern container terminals planned to be built in the future, which will allow us to handle whole heavy freight trains. According to Liepaja SEZ's development plan, the container terminals should start operating in 2017, with the capacity to handle 390,000 containers per year," Mr Kolins said.
At present, Ventspils Port is the only one of Latvia's 10 ports that can handle a whole heavy freight train, with the rest of Latvian ports having to handle such trains in parts, which delays the handling of cargo and adds to operating costs.
As one of Latvia's three main ports, Liepaja along with the Ports of Ventspils and Riga, mostly handle transit cargoes mainly from the CIS countries to the west. Latvia is the main transit trade route through the Baltic Sea region.
Liepaja is a relatively new port for commercial operations, which started in 1995, as it was formerly a Soviet west coast naval base. In 2004 the capacity of the port was about 7 million tons of cargo, handling mainly timber, metals, fertilizers and ro-ro cargoes, as well as bulk and liquid cargoes.
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