Gioia Tauro, signed on Wednesday August 10 the contract for the development of the new intermodal terminal.
Green light for the new intermodal terminal at the port of Gioia Tauro, with the signing of the contract between the Special Commissioner Andrea Agostinelli and Sebastiano Grasso, Vice President of Broström Tankers AB and Managing Director of Sogemar, the winner of the international tender for the construction and the thirty-year concession of the new rail gateway.
The tender is one of the works included in the Triennial Operational Plan, and foresees a total funding of €40 million. With the construction of the terminal, Gioia Tauro aims to develop the gateway traffic, integrating itself with the trans-European axis of the TEN-T Corridor number 5, which will unfold between Helsinki and La Valletta. The new infrastructure will have a strategic value: it will allow the port to intercept a portion of the traffic between the Far East and Europe (in many cases currently routed through the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp), further developing the Southern Gateway option, which offers the Italian ports as an alternative to the Northern European hubs for volumes directed in Switzerland and southern Germany. The goal is to increase the use of the railway, reducing transit times, transport costs and environmental pollution of the road transport system, maximizing at the same time the economic and territorial impact of the logistics system as a whole.
Great satisfaction has been expressed by the Special Commissioner Andrea Agostinelli: "Naturally it's just a happy coincidence - he said - but I like to think that my period as commissioner will conclude with the signing of such an important and awaited concession." Sebastiano Grasso, stressing the importance of the project, pointed out that the port of Gioia Tauro, already an important Transhipment center in the Mediterranean, is also intended to become a major hub for the land logistics, fully inserted into the sustainable transport circuit, and integrating maritime and railway connections, which represent the two most eco-sustainable and efficient transportation modes available to logistics operators.
The new rail gateway will take up an area of 325,000 square meters. Built between the towns of Gioia Tauro and San Ferdinando, it will partly develop inside of the port, inside the customs area in concession to Medcenter Container Terminal, and in the inland port area. The new tracks will be 3,825 meters long, 2,761m within the container terminal area and 1,064m within the intermodal terminal. A rail connection to the warehouses is also included in the project, to allow the loading and unloading of wagons, and the inclusion of switches on the three existing tracks, to enable the independent use of each individual track.
