January 27 (SeeNews) - Croatia's Adriatic Gate Container Terminal (AGCT), operating at the port of Rijeka, saw a 20% rise in container traffic to over 271,800 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) last year, local media reported.
The increase is mainly due to the opening of new intermodal services to and from Central Europe, while domestic turnover stagnated, news portal seebiz.eu reported over the weekend, quoting information from the company.
AGCT's Brajdica terminal served 314 container ships in regular weekly traffic last year, as well as 15 passenger cruise ships.
AGCT plans further growth and is working in close cooperation with the Rijeka port authorities, the railway operators and shipping companies, aiming to position itself as a gateway terminal for the markets of Central and Southeast Europe, seebiz.eu added.
In October, China's COSCO Shipping Lines launched a new Rijeka Land Sea Express, a weekly vessel and intermodal service linking the Croatian port to Central European countries. The service comprises a regular maritime Piraeus–Rijeka Express Service (PRS), exclusively connecting Rijeka and Piraeus, and a block train railway service on the routes Rijeka-Budapest-Rijeka and Rijeka-Belgrade-Rijeka aligned with it.
With the new PRS service, COSCO offers a transit 32-day trip from eastern China to Hungary's Budapest and a transit 28-day trip from southern China to Budapest, using the ports of Piraeus and Rijeka.
AGCT is a 49/51 joint venture of Croatia's main port operator, Luka Rijeka, and International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI), established following a 30-year strategic partnership deal for the operation, management, and development of AGCT signed by the two shareholders in March 2011.
In November, ICTSI said it is planning to expand AGCT's capacities to be able to accommodate the largest ships in the northern Adriatic. In addition, works have been in progress on upgrading AGCT’s on-dock rail terminal to offer an annual capacity of 360,000 TEUs per year, following which the total terminal yard capacity is expected to reach up to 600,000 TEUs per year, in line with demand, ICTSI has said.