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In search of a sustainable balance with the city centre, the port of Ancona – which with its activities (and over 6,500 employees) accounts for a total of 2.7% of the Marche’s GDP – is now looking at a private investment to revolutionize a area of approximately 43 thousand m2, currently mainly occupied by the (disassembled) warehouses of what used to be the exhibition centre, destined for the new area for passenger traffic and commercial activities, spaces for which up to a maximum of 53 are available for tender thousand mc. distributed over three buildings.
An innovative project at a national level that brings together real estate and traffic management: the estimated weight of the investment is between 15 and 40 million euros, depending on how much and how the private entity wants to build. The Central Adriatic Sea Port System Authority has issued a “notice of preliminary market consultation for the assignment of the design, construction and management activities of the new passenger terminal”: the responses are expected by 9 August and, subsequently, all the procedures for the realization of the project will be established, which still have to be written.
In this phase, in fact, the interested operators will be able to propose suggestions, solutions, redefinitions of the planned activities, to allow the ADSP to subsequently issue public tender procedures that can find the interest of the market. «We want to enhance and create new development opportunities for what is one of the main vocations of the port of Ancona, that of passenger traffic on ferries (860 thousand ferry passengers and 88 thousand cruise passengers in 2023) thanks to the central position of the port in the Adriatic Sea and connection to Balkan Europe – says Vincenzo Garofalo, president of the ADSP -. This project is part of a broader plan, which aims to have a contemporary port in terms of service standards, sustainable and welcoming for our international customers, functional to the growth of port activities and in harmony with the city of which it is an integral part”.
An investment plan of 231.7 million is already envisaged in the port of Ancona alone, largely guaranteed by the Pnrr, of which 7 million for the cold-ironing infrastructure for the electrification of all the ferry docks, within a of sustainability which, as early as 2019, seeks to anticipate European regulations regarding the limitation of sulfur content in maritime fuels for passenger ships; 16.5 for dredging (“essential work for the accessibility of the port”, underlines Garofalo): 1.6 million to continue the process of internal and internal digitalisation, with the aid of software that allows the integrated management of administrative procedures , which external, enhancing the use of artificial intelligence for the control of vehicles entering and exiting the port; 1.4 million for the cybersecurity project to protect the airport’s digital infrastructure. Resources that integrate 103.2 million intended for the construction of various infrastructure works (73 just to renovate docks and yards) and the 102 million package, public and private, for the construction of the new cruise terminal and the doubling of the production capacity of Fincantieri, whose authorization procedures have been started.
