Yilport Holding has formally taken over the Port of Taranto’s container terminal on a 49-year concession agreement with Port Network Authority of the Ionian Sea (PNAIS).
The original agreement was struck in July 2019, a story Port Technology International (PTI) reported on.
In a statement, Yilport Holding said the formal handover document was signed on 27 February 2020, which made Taranto the 22nd marine port in the operator’s portfolio.
Yilport Holding will now promote the development of commercial traffic and logistics, in particular container handling, general cargo and ro-ro operations.
Its goal is to increase Taranto’s annual capacity to 3 million TEU. The terminal already offers high-level productivity on one million square meters’ land area.
There is also easy access to highway network and five active rail platforms which connect to Milan and Bologna in 24 hours with no limitation on container size.
The terminal is also big enough to handle post-Panamax sized container vessels with -metre draft and will be to handle ultra large container vessels in a year’s time.
During the takeover, Yilport Holding contracted Konecranes for revamping work, including two ship-to-shore (STS) gantry cranes with 22-wide outreach and five STS cranes with 18-wide outreach.
The work will also include 16 rubber mounted gantry (RMG) cranes, one mobile harbour crane (MHC) and two reach stackers.
