TRIESTE – The concession for the Piattaforma Logistica Trieste, controlled by HHLA PLT ITALY, the holding company leading the Port of Hamburg, was signed today at the Port Network Authority of the Eastern Adriatic Sea.The concession has a duration of 31 years (until 2052) and covers a total area of approximately 120 thousand square metres. The work, tested at the end of 2020, is already an operational terminal after the arrival of the first RO-RO ship in recent weeks. With the recent acquisition of 50.01% of Piattaforma Logistica Trieste (PLT) by the terminal group Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA), the new multipurpose terminal in the Port of Trieste has begun operations under the name HHLA PLT Italy.
PTL was set up by the shipping company Francesco Parisi, the construction company ICOP and the Bologna dry port, with a project worth over 150 million euros (about 100 of which made available by the Port Network Authority of the Eastern Adriatic Sea).
After the reconversion of an area of 12 hectares and the recovery of a large surface area for port and logistic use (part of which were reclaimed from the sea), the purchase of the adjacent Scalo Legnami allowed doubling the original surface area of the project. Today the terminal is equipped with two docks with Ro-Ro berths, able to host up to 4 ships, as well as a railway connection.
The granting of the concession is part of the strategic acts already adopted by the Port Network Authority. In particular, the Programme Agreement of 26 June 2020 for the industrial reconversion and productive development in the Ferriera di Servola, adjacent to the Platform.
The planned actions are continuing, with investments for the safety of the area and the reconversion of the production site. Once the blast furnace demolition phase is completed, the port of Trieste will begin to expand towards the south. The goal is to create a logistics hub serving the area’s economy, equipped with a rail link capable of accommodating full trains of 750 meters and a direct road connection to the Great Road System of Trieste.
This is what Zeno D’Agostino, president of the Port Network Authority of the Eastern Adriatic Sea pointed out in September 2020, during the ceremony to celebrate the agreement between PLT and HHLA. «This is an achievement we have chased for decades, the point when northern and southern Europe become a single system in strategic and port terms, in an alliance that brings together Italy and Germany. Evidently, Trieste’s fate reflects its historical roots, and with this investment in the logistics platforms, it has fully recovered its natural central and northern European outlet, which had already made the Free port great in the past».
