Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, June 19
By Huseyn Hasanov – Trend:
The capabilities of the international sea port in Turkmenistan’s Turkmenbashi city increase the country’s potential in the logistics of transit goods, Trend reports referring to Neytralni Turkmenistan newspaper, citing the data of the Turkmen Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations.
This big investment project has included the construction of the car terminal, passenger terminal and container terminal. The complex of the international sea port has a terminal of goods, a terminal of bulk goods, a polypropylene terminal, and the Balkan shipbuilding plant, where fishing trawlers are planned to be built.
The new port has been equipped with new software and hardware complexes necessary to ensure the safety and efficiency of navigation and commodity transportation. The refrigerated containers may be stored in the port. There are covered warehouses with an area of more than 9,000 square meters.
The multimodal fleet may render the services for the storage and combined handling of containerized cargoes delivered by planes, vehicles and trains, ensuring their transportation to the vessels and from the vessels.
The container terminal has been equipped with a satellite monitoring system and the entire current information is available at the operator’s monitors and complies with Container Terminal Quality Indicator (CTQI) standard. The passenger and ferry terminals of the Turkmenbashi port are capable of receiving 300,000 passengers and 75,000 trailers per year.
The container terminal with an average annual capacity of 400,000 TEU (conventional units) can simultaneously handle three vessels with a total carrying capacity of 5,000 tons. The cargo terminal is designed for handling four million tons of cargo per year, namely, building materials, metals, wood, machinery, equipment, etc.
The fleet of ultra-modern tankers has been recently greatly expanded in the country, which is important given the increasing volumes of oil production and refining and its own chemical industry.
Earlier it was reported that the volume of cargo transit through the sea harbor of Turkmenbashi city has increased. The ships transporting building materials from Iran are unloaded, while the Kazakh wheat is loaded into the Iranian dry cargo ship at the port berths.
The goods which are supplied for Afghanistan and in the opposite direction - to Azerbaijan and Turkey are also handled in the port. The containers from Spain, intended for consignees in Uzbekistan are unloaded. The building materials, metal and wood from Turkey and Russia are dispatched.
Carbamide produced in Garabogaz city, polyethylene and polypropylene produced in the polymer plant in Kiyanly settlement, petroleum coke produced in the oil refining plant in Turkmenbashi city are supplied regularly from the sea port to Turkey, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania and other countries.
The flow of passengers and vehicles transported to the Caspian ports by Berkarar and Bagtyyar Ro-Pax ferries greatly increased.
The opening ceremony of the new port in Turkmenbashi city was held on May 2, 2018. The annual port capacity will reach 17-18 million tons. Together with the port operating earlier, this figure will reach 25-26 million tons.
The cost of the project implemented by Turkey’s Gap Insaat company is worth more than $1.5 billion. After the commissioning of the new port, great opportunities have appeared for transporting the cargo supplied to Turkmenbashi along the Silk Road route from the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, and then to the European countries through the ports of Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran, according to experts.