22.1.2015 – The delegation from Japan Research Institute, accompanied by the Head of the Overseas Projects Unit of the Japanese Ministry of Infrastructures and Transports (Mr. Kosuke Fujita – engineer) has visited the four ports members of North Adriatic Ports Association (NAPA). The objective of the visit was to increase the knowledge, the expertise and the commercial offer of North Adriatic ports as an alternative to North European ports as a gateway to markets of Eastern and Central Europe.
The Research Institute will prepare an analysis – ordered by the main Japanese companies and of interest to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism – on the potentials of the ports of North Adriatic region for their export from Japan to European markets. Such analysis will focus on the existing shipping lines together with the port and railway services offered by the NAPA ports.
During the meetings at the ports of Venice, Trieste, Koper and Rijeka, environmental and time-related costs, the routes via Northern Europe and via Northern Adriatic as well as the existing and potential railway infrastructures and services were compared, also in the light of the relevant European policies and programmes.
The delegation was particularly interested in learning the position of the EU toward investments in transport facilities, in the development plans of each NAPA port as well as in maritime connections between Japan and North Adriatic already connected with direct container lines.
Because of the latest integrations between global container carriers, Port of Koper is directly connected with the Far East by three container lines. In the case of the two newly introduced services (2M and Ocean3) Port of Koper is the first port of call in the Adriatic Sea, which is particularly welcome for those logistic companies looking for the shortest transit time possible form the Far East to Central Europe. On the other hand, container carrier Evergreen will continue with the weekly service which includes also the Japanese ports of Tokyo and Osaka.
The Japanese delegation was interested also in ports and logistic development plans in Slovenia where the State is currently providing the dredging to -15 meters in the access channel to Basin 1. In the mid of this year, also Luka Koper will start the dredging works along the Container Terminal to – 15 meters. Furthermore, The preparation of the documentation related to the extension of the Container terminal quay for 100 meters is under progress. The majority of the planned investments till the year 2020 in the amount of 200 million euros will be focused on the growth of the annual capacity of the Container Terminal from present 850.000 TEUs to 1,15 million TEUs.
For years, Luka Koper has been striving to increase the amount of Japanese cargo transported to Europe and destined to the countries of the Central and Southern part of the continent via Port of Koper. Indeed, the cargo throughput on relation Japan-Koper-Japan is on a constant increase due to the fact that large multinational companies from the “Land of the Rising Sun”, i.e. Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, Subaru, Nissan and Sony, have been our regular partners for years. In 2014, Luka Koper handled 6.200 vehicles and 17.000 TEUs, mainly in export to Japan.
