Turkmenbashy International Seaport is to be opened on May 2. New port infrastructure in Caspian Sea will provide the growth of international cargo traffic, will make the conditions for increment of export potential of the country, will shorten the time and route of big transit cargo traffic to commodity and raw material markets of Middle East and other regions.
Turkmenbashy seaport is multifunctional coastal infrastructure with high transport potential. Annual throughput capacity of new port will be 17 18 million tons. It area of more than 1,400,000 square meters accommodates ferry, passenger and container terminal.
All production and administration facilities, passenger and cargo terminal have been built by Gap Inşaat Yatırım ve Dış Ticaret A. Ş.Construction company (Turkey) with application of modern materials and technologies.
It is distinguished by constructivism and functionality.This architectural complex is supplemented with transport facilities like roads with flyover intersections of total length more than 4 thousand meters and railways of total length more than 30 thousand meters connecting the seaport with land routes of the country that harmonically merged into coastal infrastructure.
Total length of new quay wall is 3,800 meters.It is hard to imagine now how the old coastal line looked before.Navigation channels were widened and deepened during fundamental reconstruction of Turkmenbashy International Seaport.
Around 9 million cubic meters of soil have been extracted during dredging works for vessels’ navigation to the berths.Att he same time, the volume of earth for landfill for making new port territory was more than 5 million cubic meters.
New sand landfill was made, vertical drainage was installed and dam for construction of jetty and other facilities was filled.
For example, automobile and passenger ferry terminal occupies 230 square meters; several vessels are able to come along side its quay.The capacity of the terminal is 800 passengers and 200 vehicles per day, which makes 300,000 passengers and 75,000 trailers per year.
It can receive the boats of two types with horizontal loading for transportation of wheel based equipment (cars, cargo trucks, railway carriages0 and passengers as well as Ro-Pax ferryboats designated for transportation of greater number of passengers and cargos.
The building of passenger terminal is designated for 400 seats. It has a hotel, shopping and entertainment centres. Passport control service and other necessary procedures are arranged on modern level.
Container terminal with annual average capacity of 400,000 TEU occupies the territory of 250,000 square meters. This strategic facility will provide the services for storage and processing of containers delivered by air, roads or railways and will load it to maritime transport and back.
The length of the quay of container terminal is more than 500 meters what allows load and offload several vessels of 5,000 tons of total cargo capacity.
New port has modern new lifting and transport equipment for cargo processing, for example, port cranes “Liebherr” can operate in grapple and container modes as well as make heavy lifts.
The boom reach of the cranes varies from 10 to 45 meters with the cargo capacity up to 85 tons.It equipped with multifunctional analyser, cargo registers, remote control, electronic video surveillance and other computer control systems providing high production rate and operational safety of the equipment.
Owing to this, the production capacity of each crane reaches 1000 tons of cargo per hour during operations with bulk cargo and 35 loading cycles per hours during container handling.
Ship-to shore berth loaders with production capacity of 25 TEU per hour are used in container terminal. It is necessary to note that container terminal is equipped with CTQI satellite control system, which displays current information of the operators’ monitors. Its introduction allowed making single quality control system in this type of services.
With regards to technical provision of new seaport, it equipped with the most advanced programme hardware complexes necessary for safety and efficiency of navigation and cargo transportation as well as for environment protection.
Navigation control in the port, loading and offloading of ships will be carried out by automatic systems in real time mode.Visual monitoring of the port territory and sea is carried out from port traffic control tower.
Bulk cargo terminal with throughput capacity of 3 million tons is designated for processing of various resource materials, petrochemical production, coal, forages, fertilizers, grain, salt, etc., for storage of which the warehouses and bunkers have been built.
General cargo terminal is one of the largest facilities.Its average capacity is 4 million tons of cargo per year.It is designated for reception and dispatch of various construction materials, metal, steel, timber, machineries, equipment, etc.
several ships can be loaded or offloaded at the quay of the terminal simultaneously.Powerful rail and portable port cranes are designated for loading and offloading.
With regards to specialized terminal for storage and shipment of polypropylene with 120,000 tons per year capacity, this production is on the leading position among the oil products made by Turkmenbashy Refinery Complex. The geography of consumers of Turkmen polypropylene is quite wide and the most of it is shipped by sea.
In addition, another complex for production of polyethylene and polypropylene is under construction in Kiyanly settlement on Caspian coast.Construction of new facility dictated the necessity of expansion of throughput capacity of existing polypropylene terminal.
It is important to mention that the project of new seaport was developed taking into account environmental requirements according to Green Port international standards.For protection of marine environment of Caspian Sea, every terminal will be equipped with biological treatment facility.
Shipyard Balkan with the capability of construction of four ships and repair of twenty ships of different class will be important component of new seaport.The project of Turkmenbashy International Seaport can easily be referred to as historical one as its realization brings the country to new level of cooperation supporting their full-scale integration to international system of economic relations, improvement of the role of Turkmenistan as important centre of transit communications.
Seaport on Caspian coast will be important link if the formation of modern transport infrastructure.It will allow bringing economic and trade cooperation between Asian and European countries to new level, giving strong impulse to interregional long-term relations; it will open huge opportunities for optimization of transport routes on Eurasian space.