The Slovenian government will invest €4.4 million (US$5.4 million) to construct a new gate for trucks at the port of Koper, which will be the third entrance to the port.
The new gate will be intended mainly for container trucks, which represent more than half of the trucks entering the port of Koper, which registered a total of 330,000 trucks last year.
This project is expected to improve internal logistics and traffic safety, while relieving the burden on city roads. “Every time the port expands, the city loses something, but the new entrance is a win-win situation, as there will be fewer trucks on the city streets,” noted the mayor of Koper, Aleš Bržan.
The Slovenian Minister of infrastructure, Jernej Vrtovec, stated, “The more we create conditions for the development of the port, the faster Slovenian logistics will develop. The government has determined a list of 187 important investments for starting the economy after the epidemic, of which 12 projects are in the Port of Koper.”
The new truck gate investment was made with the help of European Union funds from the Napa4Core project and was inaugurated on 25 May together with another two investments in the major Slovenian port; a new garage with a capacity of 6,000 vehicles and a petrol station for the supply of working machines and vehicles in the port.
“Despite the fact that we recorded a decline in [automotive] throughput last year, we witnessed a rebound in the second half of last year,” said the president of the management board of Luka Koper, Dimitrij Zadel, who highlighted that “we ended the year as the fifth largest car terminal in Europe and the first in the Mediterranean.”