The Institute for Political, Social and Economic studies (Eurispes) in Italy has just disclosed an ambitious plan to build up a brand new container hub at the port of Palermo in Sicily capable of handling 16 million containers per year.
The investment required will be around €5bn ($5.8bn) according to the first valuations and will have to be almost entirely covered by private investors.
The main aim would be to make the port of Palermo the most important container hub in the central Med, overtaking all the other Italian and international competitors including Malta, Tanger Med, Gioia Tauro and Valencia.
The new container infrastructure will have quay length of 9 km, 200 ha of yards, depth ranging from 18.5 to 27m and will be connected with an inland terminal.
Pasqualino Monti, head of the local port authority, said he was ready and available to discuss with any private investor interested in investing €5bn on the port.
In 2017, the total throughput of Palermo was 13,310 teu.
