Odesa's Chornomorsk port may be upgraded for $1.1bn: Ukraine is looking for an investor

Yuliia Svyrydenko / Facebook

Ukraine has launched a public-private partnership tender for the port of Chornomorsk in Odesa region. The project includes two terminals.

This was announced by Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko.

According to Oleksii Kuleba, Vice Prime Minister for Recovery, he has already signed an order to establish a tender commission. The next steps are to prepare the documentation, announce an international tender and select the winner.

Under the partnership, the state will retain ownership, while the investor will be able to modernise and manage the plant.

Yuliia Svyrydenko stressed that more than 40 leading port operators and investors have already shown interest in the project. According to her, this could be the largest investment in the history of Ukrainian ports — hundreds of millions of dollars in modernisation and more than $1.1 billion in budget revenues over 40 years.

Oleksii Kuleba added that in three years the volume of container traffic could grow to 250,000 TEU per year, and in the long term, return to the pre-war level of more than half a million TEU.

As a reminder, the Cabinet of Ministers has decided to privatise JSC «Odesa Port Plant». The state-owned stake in the enterprise will be put up for an open electronic auction with a starting price of 4.5 billion hryvnias. According to Yuliia Svyrydenko, attracting a private owner and investment is a prerequisite for the plant to resume full operation.