April 4 (SeeNews) - Investments in equipment in the future Rijeka Gateway container terminal will be around 100 million euro ($109 million), with a focus on electric container handling machines, its majority owner, Dutch-based APM Terminals, said.
"I am proud that – with 95% of our equipment value being invested in electric assets – Rijeka Gateway will be an almost fully decarbonised container terminal," APM Terminals quoted Koen Benders, Rijeka Gateway project director, as saying in a press release on Wednesday.
APM Terminals, a part of Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, owns 51% of project company Rijeka Gateway, and Croatia’s ENNA Logic owns the remaining 49%. The groundbreaking ceremony for the project on the northern Croatian Adriatic coast was held in September 2023.
"To meet the needs at Rijeka Gateway, APM Terminals and ENNA Logic have invested in more than 60 pieces of electric container handling equipment, meaning that all major container handling will be carried out by electric-powered assets, when operations start," APM Terminals said.
The full fleet of electric equipment will comprise four STS cranes, 15 rubber-tyred gantry cranes, two rail-mounted gantry cranes, 28 electric terminal tractors and 14 electric vehicles.
The first pieces of equipment will arrive in July 2024, with operations to start in 2025 with an annual capacity of 650,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), once the construction is complete. An increase to 1,055,000 TEU is planned for a later phase.
When the Rijeka Gateway is fully operational in 2025, it will set a huge milestone for APM Terminals’ efforts to electrify its container handling fleet, APM Terminals said.
"At APM Terminals, we have an ambitious goal of reaching Net-Zero by 2040. To reach this goal and decarbonise our operations, we need to reduce energy usage, replace fossil-fuel driven equipment with battery-electric and decarbonise our grid using renewable energy," according to Sahar Rashidbeigi, the head of decarbonisation in APM Terminals.
($ = 0.921 euro)