On October 27,2017, an Anaklia Development Consortium team briefed U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials on the specifics about the Anaklia Deep Sea Port and special economic zone projects.
Mamuka Khazaradze and Kurt Conti spoke about the consortium’s immediate plans, while Mr. Levan Akhvlediani, Director General of the Consortium, and Ms. Ketevan Bochor
ishvili, project director of Anaklia City, gave detailed presentations of the two schemes.
“The Anaklia port is a crucial project,” Mr. R. Michael Cowgill, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Georgia, said, “Thank you for the meeting and the most interesting presentations. I’m pretty sure the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will become involved in the port’s development during its various stages.”
The formal part of the meeting was followed by a Q&A session. Chamber members put forward several initiatives and proposals
Work on the project’s territory is set to start on December 20, 2017. Arrangements for the development of the port began in 2016 and involved the following:
The Anaklia Development Consortium selected the US “SSA Marine” as the container terminal operator of the prospected Anaklia Deep Sea Port, which is also going to be one of the biggest investors in the Anaklia Port Project.
For approx. 1 year, the Anaklia Development Consortium and MTBS international company worked on the Anaklia Deep Sea Port master plan of 600 pp. approved by the Georgian Government in October 2017. “Anaklia City” company took on the Anaklia City and special economic zone development. “Anaklia City” established in June 2017 executed the memorandum of understanding with the Incheon Free Economic Zone (South Korea), established ties with over 100 international companies, held a tender to select the one to prepare the Anaklia City economic analysis, feasibility study and master plan. Van Oord, a high profile Dutch company performed the preliminary marine engineering, including geotechnical, topographic etc. surveys. The Anaklia Development Consortium carried out all the technical investigations regarding the feasibility of the Project. Along with the Consortium, Moffatt & Nichol, Royal HaskoningDHV and Van Oord international companies worked on the Anaklia Port draft design. The Anaklia Deep Sea Port development control plan was approved, too.
Government of Georgia transferred a part of the Anaklia Port investment territory to the Consortium.
Together with up to 20 local and international companies, including Royal HaskoningDHV and Ecoline International, the Consortium drafted the Environment Impact Report, carried out over 50 investigations of the land and marine flora, fauna of the project and surrounding areas and performed socioeconomic analysis of the Anaklia and Samegrelo-Upper Svaneti regions; several meetings were held with the community members of the town of Zugdidi and Anaklia.