Chinese investors have agreed to pour an undisclosed sum into a new container terminal set to be run by APM Terminals at Vado, in north-western Italy.
Representatives from Qingdao Port Group and APM Terminals met earlier this week in The Hague to set sail on a new joint venture that will invest in the new port development while working with other partners.
Due to open in January 2018, operations at the Vado hub are expected to dovetail with the 275,000 annual TEU capacity at nearby Vado Reefer Terminal facility, which APM Terminals acquired from Italian fresh produce company GF Group in August of this year as part of the latter’s well-publicised restructuring.
The Italian government is providing €300m for civil works on the new Vado project, with APM Terminals itself investing €150m.
In 2014, ports along northern Italy’s Ligurian coast, including La Spezia, Genoa and Savona/Vado, handled a combined 3.5m TEUs, representing an increase of approximately 6 per cent compared with the previous year, APM Terminals reported.
The Port of Qingdao, located in the Shandong Province on the Yellow Sea, is one of northern China’s major ports – the seventh-busiest container port in the world and the fifth-busiest in mainland China, with reported throughput of 16.6m TEUs in 2014.
Since 2003, APM Terminals has been a minority shareholder in the Qingdao Qianwan Container Terminal (QQCT), which handled 7.9m TEUs in 2014. A major expansion of facilities at the port is now underway.
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