Rosmorport, Russia’s federal agency for ports, has signed an agreement with Primorsky UPK to build a deepwater container port on the Baltic coast.

The plan is to build the “universal transshipment complex” on a 760ha site in Primorsk, a town in the Vyborg district, north of Saint Petersburg. When the first phase is complete in December 2024 it will be the only port in the Baltic capable of handling the largest modern cargo ships, which can carry as many as 23,000 containers.

Further phases will follow over the next five years, until the port has 10 berths and 3.7km of docking space, and is able to handle 2 million containers, or 65 million tons of freight, a year. This is about a fifth of Russia’s Baltic ports capacity.

There will be five terminals, able to handle coal, fertiliser, cereal and general cargo as well as containers.

As well as the port complex, there will be a four-lane highway and a high-speed railway to improve communications in the hinterland.

The railway project will involve the reconstruction of the existing Vyborg-Matrosovo-Primorsk-Ermilovo line and a new section to bypass Saint Petersburg.