February 27 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian port operator BMF Port Burgas has earmarked between 55 million euro ($58.25 million) and 60 million euro for the construction of the first of two berths for deep-water container ships as well as the technical design of power infrastructure for both, the company told SeeNews on Monday.
The bulk of the EU-backed investment will be deployed for building the berth at Port Terminal Burgas West, which is planned to be completed around March 2025, a company representative told SeeNews in a telephone interview.
Part of the sum will be used for developing the technical design of infrastructure that will supply electricity to container ships at the two adjacent berths. The timeline and the investment amount for the construction of the second berth are yet to be decided upon.
The project is expected to expand the capacity of BMF Port Burgas' container terminal to 350,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), a measure of cargo capacity, from 200,000 TEU at present.
BMF Port Burgas started the construction of the new berth last week with funds from the EU's Connecting Europe Facility.
In October, BMF Port Burgas signed a grant agreement with the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) for the sum of some 46.9 million euro in support of the development of low-emission multimodal transport infrastructure at Port of Burgas.
Earlier last year, 3SIIF, an investment fund of the Three Seas Initiative, acquired an unspecified but sizeable stake in BMF Port Burgas from Bulgarian investment holding company Advance Properties.
($ = 0.9441 euro)