Global Ports Investments has announced that as part of its strategy to prioritise operating efficiency and optimise the Group’s asset base, the management teams of Petrolesport and First Container Terminal are to be unified.
The Board has appointed Albert Likholet as Managing Director of both Petrolesport and First Container Terminal, effective from 13 May 2019. Alexander Tikhov, who was Managing Director of FCT, will continue with the Group as an adviser to the general director of Global Ports Management LLC.
“This development is the next step in the integration of the Group’s container terminal operations in the Port of St. Petersburg. Over the last few years the Group has centralised its commercial, legal, financial and other team functions in order to effectively manage the Group’s resources. This approach has helped improve the Group’s value proposition to its customers with the launch of a Unified Client Service across all terminals in 2018 giving clients faster, easier access to service teams. The merging of the two management teams will further align the strategic focus across the two terminals based at the Port of St. Petersburg, improving clarity and speed of decision-making to bring tangible benefits to customers in terms of planning capability and distribution of services as Group resources will be allocated more efficiently and effectively to client requirements”, Global Ports said in its statement.
PLP and FCT operate in the Big Port of Saint-Petersburg. The current combined throughput capacity of the terminals exceeds 1.25 million TEU, the terminals occupy 208 ha of land and have more than 3.2 km of quay line. In 2018, the combined container throughput of the two terminals made 863.4 thousand TEU (of which FSC handled 617 thousand TEU and PLP 246.3 thousand TEU).