Belarus as shortest West-East link: Snopkov highlights new terminal’s potential

The Greatport multimodal railway terminal in the China-Belarus Industrial Park Great Stone will play an important role in developing exports and transit through Belarus, First Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Snopkov said during the opening ceremony of the terminal on 6 November, BelTA has learned.

“The new terminal will increase our country’s terminal capacity by a third and once again confirm that the shortest, most optimal, and most efficient route between the West and the East is through Belarus. I am confident that it will be not just a loading and unloading point, but a multimodal terminal in the truest sense of the word. That is, a terminal utilizing the railway, the highway, and the nearby airport, which will not only receive and ship cargo, but also process and redistribute it to other destinations in Belarus and other countries,” Nikolai Snopkov said.

The first deputy prime minister also expressed gratitude to everyone from the Belarusian and Chinese sides who participated in the implementation of the project. “The project is complex and challenging. In the context of geopolitical rifts, we are fulfilling the task set by the president. Aleksandr Lukashenko has repeatedly said that he is responsible for security and peace in the country, while we must build the economy. The terminal opened today is a powerful element of Belarus’ economy. Utilizing the potential of transit and logistics is highly necessary for the generation of foreign currency earnings for our country and for the development of exports. Everyone present here is fulfilling the tasks set by the president not in words but in deeds, and is confirming in practice the comprehensive, all-weather cooperation with the People’s Republic of China. Thank you very much to our Chinese friends. I sincerely hope that Chinese companies will continue to proactively develop the terminal,” he said, pointing out that the Belarusian side counts on cooperation with China Merchants Group, China Railway, and the Xi’an Port.

The project is being implemented by a park resident and has the necessary infrastructure for the formation, departure, and reception of full-length container trains, as well as cargo handling in all directions: export, import, and transit. Its capacity stands at 180,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) per year, with the potential to increase up to 500,000 TEUs per year. On a 41-hectare land plot, four railway tracks with a length of 1,050 meters each, along with a number of auxiliary infrastructure facilities, were constructed. The second phase of the park is already taking shape around the terminal, where warehouse complexes and production facilities will soon appear.