The selection of the contractor for the construction of the extenstion of the container terminal has become legally final. The selected company Kolektor, with partners Grafist and Adriaing, will start the preparatory works immediately after signing the contract, while the start of the works is expected this summer.
The extension of the Pier I involves the construction of additional 98,5 meters of quayside and 24.830 sqm of adjacent stacking areas. The whole construction will rest on 770 steel piles, each 65 meters long. The construction works shall progress in accordance with the environment permit, between 07.00 and 18.00 hours. The quayside is expected to be completed until March 2021, while the stacking areas are to be finished by October 2022.
The total length of the container terminal quay will be extended to 695 meters. A public procurement is currently going on for the purchase of two latest-generation super post-panamax cranes.
“After the works have been completed, the container terminal will have a capacity of 1.3 million TEU annually, but with the optimization of the processes at the terminal, we shall increase this to 1.5 million TEU. This will ensure the long-term competitiveness of our most important terminal,” assures the president of the management board of Luka Koper, Mr Dimitrij Zadel, who, when he took office in December 2017, was facing a deadlock on this project. Due to the concerns of the local community regarding the impact of the increase in the container terminal on the living conditions in the old part of the city, the project could not obtain the environmental permit. Only the signing of an agreement on mitigation measures between the Luka Koper and the Municipality of Koper in July 2018 made it possible to obtain a building permit and to carry out the first phase of the project, ie the installation of test drilling piles.
Luka Koper also obtained European funding for this investment, worth € 45.6 million, as part of the NAPA4CORE project (Connecting Europe Facility).
