The Norebo group of companies, one of the major players in the Russian seafood sector, has announced plans to build a refrigerated storage and vessel repair facility in Murmansk, on the shores of Kola Bay of the Barents Sea.
The company plans to spend RUB 4.1 billion (USD 58 million, EUR 51.5 million) on the project, which will include a docking facility, warehousing, cold storage facilities, and a cargo handling center. The facility’s storage capacity will be 35,000 metric tons (MT) and it will be able to serve up to 800,000 MT of total annual loading capacity, with 500,000 MT expected to be seafood products and the remaining 300,000 MT expected to be break bulk cargo. More than 200 jobs will be created as a result of the project, it said.
Norebo Deputy CEO Sergey Sennikov said the company hopes to complete the terminal – called Udarnik – by 2026. The company will use its own funds and loans to pay for the construction, he told local Russian media.
Sennikov said the terminal, which will also include repair, bunkering, survey, supply, and maintenance services for fishing vessels, will be available for use not just by Norebo, but also other fishing companies and traders. There is a shortage of quality port services in Murmansk available for fishing firms, forcing companies to send vessels to neighboring Norway for repair.
Murmansk Region Deputy Governor Olga Kuznetsova said that the ship repair market in the area is RUB 2 billion (USD 28.3 million, EUR 25.1 million) annually, but only RUB 500 million (USD 7.06 million, EUR 6.28 million) of that is spent in Russia, with the rest going to foreign suppliers – namely, Norway, according to the Interfax media agency.
The port is expected to get busier in coming years as more shipping occurs between Russia’s Far East and its population centers in Western Russia via the Northern Sea Route. A regular route from China to the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski and further to Murmansk and St. Petersburg for shipping fish from China and the Russian Far East is now being planned. In the Kamchatka region, Norebo operates the terminal of Seroglazka. Possible cooperation on the route is now being discussed with Atomflot, a state-owned company that operates transportation infrastructure in the Russian Arctic.
“Besides a shipping line, a supplier of reefers for transportation of fish will be needed,” Sennikov told the media agency ITAR TASS.
Photo courtesy of nickbeam/Shutterstock
