The biggest serviced ship ever has left the Riga Port

“Kyzikos” entered the Riga Port on October 24, and its loading was performed at three berths – first it was loaded up to the permitted draught at the Riga Trade Port berth No. 7, then up to draught of 12 meters cargo was supplemented at the Riga Trade Port berth No. 15, but up to the maximum permitted depth of 14.2 m loading was finished at the only Riga Port deepwater berth in Žurku Island. Andrejs Naumenko, Member of the Board of ship agency company Rix Shipping, says: “We are glad that we have managed to successfully service the biggest ship that has ever entered the Riga Port. The major problems are created by the insufficient depth of ship passes – in order to load such a large cargo of iron ore it was the depth at the berths and in the ship channel that made us use three berths. If it could be performed in one place, then loading would require less than four days which was the case this time. It should be noted that capacity of the ship permitted loading of another 10 thousand tons of iron ore, but even depth of the deepest berth of the Riga Port in Žurku Island did not allow doing so. This was already the third Panamax type ship that was loaded with iron ore, and this year forwarding of another two similar vessels is planned. Iron ore is delivered to the Riga Port from Russian mines and further it is forwarded to a metal-working company in Great Britain. Ralfs Kļaviņš, Chairman of the Board of the Riga Trade Port, notes that deepening of the Riga Port is very significant because cargo owners want to use bigger and bigger ships.

When asked about coordination of operation and guaranteeing of safety so that ships of yet inexperienced length and width could be serviced, Eduards Delvers, Chief Captain of the Freeport of Riga Harbor Master Office, says: “The ship is really big – its parameters are bigger than the ones of Panamax type ships. Vessels with width exceeding 33 meters cannot enter the Panama Canal – “Kyzikos” is 37 meters wide and 230 meters long. I was sure that we will be able to deal with this task, but for the sake of safety we attracted all support services. Four tugboats, including the pilot vessels Santa and Stella of the Freeport of Riga helped the ship to get moored at the berths and leave them. Our experienced pilot Anatolijs Pavļučenkovs led the big ship out of the port.

The Freeport of Riga Authority has updated the project for deepening of the ship channel and berths that will allow the Riga Port to service the big ships without any additional activities. It should be reminded that the generally accepted formula confirms that from each ton of sea freight 10 lats remain in Latvia, thus simplified calculating shows that servicing of “Kyzikos” left almost one million lats in the economy of Latvia.