Hungary to build a fleet in its new seaport on the Adriatic?

According to index.hu, the project of building a “Hungarian port” in Trieste is already in the preparation phase. It came to light a couple of days ago that the transaction with which the Hungarian state bought a small maritime territory in Trieste, Italy, was successfully finished.

According to index.hu, the state-owned Adria Port Ltd. bought a 32-hectare territory in Trieste with a 300-metre-long seashore and the relevant concession rights. The purchase

cost EUR 25 million,

which is a bit more than nine billion forints. The deadline for the concession rights is 60 years. As it was known already before, the territory needs to be recovered because of its industrial past. 

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade told index.hu that they increased the authorised capital of the company from EUR 1.8 million to EUR 16.8 million in December which will be used in the next phase of the project. The goal of the investment is to strengthen Hungary’s position in the international logistic chain and contribute to developing the country’s foreign trade. The ministry added that the government continues to investigate all other opportunities to reach its goal. However,

they do not want to create a fleet on the Adriatic Sea.

Based on the plans, the port will welcome small and medium cargo ships from where companies will forward their goods on railway and trucks towards Hungary and other countries. However, index.hu received a reader’s letter to which a map was attached showing that the sea near the port is very shallow. That means that even small ships will be unable to dock there. The ministry said that the map is not up to date and

everything is OK with the seashore their company bought.

As we reported before, the Trieste port will provide reliability and predictability for Hungarian firms, which will guarantee profitability, Szijjártó said last July. He added that the interest generated by the project among exporters made it “obvious” that it would be profitable, arguing that Hungarian and international companies would pay significant sums of money for storage and shipping at the site.

Szijjártó said at the time that the government had chosen Trieste because

it is one of the closest ports to Hungary with enough capacity to meet the needs of Hungarian exporters.

He said the port would be used by medium/large freight vessels. The largest ships tend to dock either in Rotterdam or Piraeus where they transfer their goods onto smaller vessels before sending them off to Trieste, he added. The turnover of goods between Trieste and Hungary has grown four-fold in recent years, with at least one freight train a day running between them.

Hungary expects this to double once the Hungarian port starts operating, he added. The minister said Hungary had also been in talks with Slovenia on setting up a port in Koper. However, those talks fell through due to opposition from some of the parties in Slovenia’s minority government, he added.

Source: index.hu