New St Petersburg port opens

St. Petersburg, Russia—Port Bronka, the new deepwater port in St. Petersburg, was opened with regular services beginning January 2016.

The port includes three specialized complexes: container terminal, Ro-Ro terminal, and logistics centre. MSCC Bronka’s first stage development will allow handling of 500,000 TEU of container cargo and 130,000 units of Ro-Ro cargo per year.

“During transformation of Port Bronka from a construction site to a fully operational terminal it was our first priority to establish a stable organization and a full range of reliable services. In the start-up phase this was much more important than too fast volume growth”, Alexey Shukletsov, executive director of the Port Bronka stated satisfied with the port’s development after the first months.

In future the capacity will be increased up to 1.9 million TEUs and 260,000 of Ro-Ro cargos per year. With a water depth of 14.4 metres the port is St. Petersburg’s only deepwater port and is able to handle Panamax class container vessels and Star class Ro-Pax ferries.

Regular container services directly connect Bronka to Hamburg, Rotterdam and Antwerp. The Baltic Levant Express service by shipping line CMA CGM offers direct links to Mediterranean Sea ports.

The company FENIX LLC, owner and operator of Port Bronka, has signed more than 500 contracts with hinterland clients, including importers, exporters, trucking companies, freight forwarders. Currently, up to three container block trains per day (export and import) arrive at the port, which shows the good acceptance of the port already in the early stage despite actually difficult market environment conditions.

On the Ro-Ro side shipping line Finnlines calls the terminal on a weekly basis.

From the start, general cargo handling developed above expectations. The port is equipped with a 302-ton lifting capacity Liebherr mobile harbour crane (LHM 800). Port Bronka regularly enjoys high and heavy cargoes above 150 tons per package.

In August 2016, new car handling was successfully established at the terminal.

During the start-up phase numerous modern technical features have been established, including a specially designed pre-gate service area, twin lift operations, digital signature, EDI services and container weighing according to SOLAS regulations are only few examples for the most modern sea terminal facility in the Russian Federation.

“We are happy that our clients benefit from our favourable location, superior infrastructure and high productivity from the early beginning of terminal operations”, added Stefan Wilkens, general manager for the container terminal.