Russia’s federal agency FSUE Rosmorport and Primorsky Universal Transshipment Complex (Primorsky UPK) have signed a deal to move forward with the development of a large deepwater universal port complex, said to be the largest investment project on the Baltic Coast of the Russian Federation.
Located in the Vyborg district of the Leningrad region, the Primorsky transshipment complex will be the first deepwater port in the Baltic basin capable of handling bulkers, general cargo and roro vessels of up to 150,000 dwt as well as 23,000 teu containerships of up to 200,000 dwt. The seaport will use new systems for loading, storage and transshipment of bulk cargo. The facilities will reportedly feature technologies that exclude the negative impacts on the environment, with no dusting and noise footprint.
The construction of the port complex should be completed by December 2024, with the trial operation of terminals beginning in 2025. According to the project, the full design capacity of Primorsky UPK should be reached by 2030, with the annual volume of cargo at up to 65m tons, which will account for more than 20% of the total turnover of Russian ports in the Baltic Sea. The project is aimed at reorienting Russian foreign trade cargo from the seaports of the Baltic States and developing the potential for Russian exports.
The Primorsky UPK is part of a large-scale infrastructure project that includes a port complex, a new high-speed four-lane highway and a modern high-speed railway infrastructure. The railway project envisions the complete reconstruction of the existing Vyborg-Matrosovo-Primorsk-Ermilovo section and the construction of the North-Eastern railway bypass of Saint Petersburg. The project is expected to create 6,000 new jobs at the terminals in the seaport of Primorsk, currently the largest Russian oil-loading port in the Baltic Sea, and will also see the construction of a new residential area with a capacity of up to 12,000 people.
