Port of Ancona, an endowment of up to 40 million for the new passenger terminal

In search of a sustainable balance with the city centre, the port of Ancona - whose activities (and over 6,500 employees) account for a total of 2.7% of the Marche region's GDP - is now looking to private investment to revolutionise an area of about 43,000 square metres, currently mainly occupied by the warehouses (disused) of what was once the trade fair district, allocating it to the new passenger traffic area and commercial activities, spaces for which up to a maximum of 53,000 cubic metres distributed over three buildings are up for grabs.

An innovative project at the national level that brings together real estate and traffic management: the estimated weight of the investment is between 15 and 40 million euro, depending on how much and how the private party wishes 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 of the new passenger terminal": responses are expected by 9 August and, thereafter, all the procedures for the realisation of the project, which is still to be written, will be established.

In this phase, in fact, interested operators will be able to put forward suggestions, solutions, and rearrangements of planned activities, in order to allow the Adsp to subsequently issue public evidence 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 port's central position in the Adriatic Sea and connection to Balkan Europe," says Vincenzo Garofalo, president of the Adsp. This project is part of a broader plan that aims to have a port that is contemporary in service standards, sustainable and welcoming for our international clientele, functional to the growth of port activities, and in tune with the city of which it is an integral part".

In the port of Ancona alone, an investment plan of EUR 231.7 million is already planned, largely guaranteed by the Pnrr, of which EUR 7 million for the cold-ironing infrastructure for the electrification of all the ferry docks, in a sustainability framework that already from 2019 seeks to anticipate European regulations on limiting the sulphur content of maritime fuels for passenger ships; EUR 16.5 million for dredging ("essential work for the port's accessibility," Garofalo emphasises): 1.6 million to continue in the process of advanced digitalisation, both internally, with the help of software enabling the integrated management of administrative procedures, and externally, by enhancing the use of artificial intelligence to control vehicles entering and leaving the port; 1.4 million for the cybersecurity project to protect the port's digital infrastructure. Resources that complement 103.2 million earmarked for the construction of various infrastructure works (73 million just to renovate quays and yards) and the 102 million package, public and private, for the construction of the new cruise terminal and the doubling of Fincantieri's production capacity, the authorisation procedures for which have been launched.