Rail Garant: the terminal in Muuga will be opened with delay
The Rail Garant container terminal construction in the Muuga port near Tallinn will be delayed by a year because of the decision to buy new cranes, not for any other reason, LETA/Eesti Päevaleht writes.
The building of the container terminal of the Russian leading railway transport company was stalled in Muuga not because the figurehead of the project Nikolai Falin left but because a decision was made to use completely new and modern devices instead of old cranes, Rail Garant Estonia manager Pavel Makarov says in an interview.
Deputy director general of Rail Garant and freshly appointed head of Rail Garant Estonia Pavel Makarov said in an interview that the terminal will certainly be built and it will serve only the interests of Rail Garant. The hostile activities of the nearby Muuga CT container terminal casts doubt on the potential cooperation of the terminals in the future.
Makarov said that the company is obliged to build the terminal by the summer of 2013 when the first stage of the construction, i.e. crane- and railways will be completed. "Irrespective of when we open the terminal, we pay rental fees since the conclusion of the contract this summer," he said.
Makarov said that the second stage of the terminal will be completed by the end of 2013 and it will start operating at the start of 2014.
Makarov said that initial optimistic plans prescribed starting to handle goods in the autumn of 2013 but the developer changed the technology chosen for the terminal, observing the solutions used in the Ust-Luga port and chose the most modern equipment of European producers.
Tallinna Sadam declared the offer of Russian company Rail Garant as the best among bids that were submitted for operating the new Muuga port container terminal area in March 2011. The other contestant of the competition, Transiidikeskus, that operates the Muuga CT container terminal next to the new terminal area, declared at once then that it would dispute the results and do all it can to avoid the competing terminal being built.
The terminal was supposed to start working in the first quarter of 2013 according to initial plans and when the second stage of it is completed, handle around 300,000 TEU in 2015. Yet, for a long time, the work in the terminal area was at standstill, casting doubts about its future.
