The Quarantine Mole container terminal (the Odessa port) received the first vessel in test mode on Wednesday, September 10. The first and second phases of the terminal have already been commissioned. The first deputy head of the Administration of Seaports of Ukraine (ASU), Yurii Vaskov, announced this in Odessa during the "Black Sea Container Summit 2014," the CFTS correspondent reports.

According to the first deputy head of the ASU, all the government authorizations and certificates necessary to start operation of the terminal have already been obtained.

"That technical problem involving the breakwater has also found its solution. Today, one can already say that the general contractor, which is responsible for the project, has officially confirmed that construction has been completed and that it has resolved this situation with its own funds as part of the original cost of the project," said Vaskov.

As reported, the Odessa seaport and HPC Ukraina (a subsidiary of Hamburg Port Consulting GmbH) began implementing the Quarantine Mole project in 2010. HPC Ukraina presently operates a container terminal with a capacity of 700,000 TEU in Odessa, and the new project essentially involved expansion of the existing terminal through reclamation of 19.3 hectares of alluvial territory. The capacity of the new container terminal at Quarantine Mole will be 600,000 TEU.

Following the commissioning of the first phase of the new terminal, the Odessa port will be able to receive modern container ships with increased capacity (in the first phase 8,000 TEU, a length of up to 323 meters, and a loaded draft of 14 meters). In the future, after implementation of the subsequent phases, the terminal will be able to receive container vessels with lengths of up to 364 meters, drafts of up to 15.5 meters, and container capacities of up to 10,000 TEU.