Trieste connects north and south
The northern Italian port of Trieste is cooperating with a German enterprise to open a terminal that will serve a maritime / railway system.
The entity Trieste Logistics Platform (TLP) has welcomed a new investor on board, namely the terminal operator Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA). The northern German enterprise has entered into an agreement with the TLP entities ICOP and with Francesco Parisi for a stake in TLP’s capital. The funds will be used to create a terminal in Trieste serving maritime / railway systems in Central and Eastern European countries. Its goal is to augment the logistics and maritime port networks in southern as well as northern Europe. HHLA will increase its capital at the end of this year and then become the TLP’s largest shareholder.
Zeno D’Agostino, the president of the Port Network Authority of the Eastern Adriatic Sea, declared that his entity is not actively involved in the venture, but that it will monitor all of the subsequent authorisation and execution processes arising.
Parisi pointed out that “HHLA’s stake in the facility has greatly fortified the TLP’s growth prospects, as well as those of the entire port of Trieste. Our development strategy of looking to Central and Eastern Europe also fits with HHLA’s overall orientation.”
A terminal on a 28 ha compound
The terminal is located in the zone of the free port of Trieste, and it covers a total area of approximately 28 ha. The northern part of the compound will be dedicated primarily to breakbulk transport activities as well as to logistics services.
The heart of the terminal is coming up in the south. The new area on a dock with a draught for deepsea ships will commence operations in Q1 / 2021. It has been designed to handle containers and ro-ro activities. The TLP terminal’s capacity will then stand at approximately 300,000 teu, 90,000 ro-ro units and 700,000 t of breakbulk goods. On top of this there is an option to further enlarge the facility’s capacity significantly.
The TLP terminal has its own dedicated rail spur too. Over and above this, HHLA’s railway subsidiary Metrans already connects the port of Trieste to its European intermodal network. In the opinion of all of the parties involved the strategically well-located site of the port of Trieste in the northern Adriatic Sea offers especially good development opportunities in the gateway’s hinterland links.
