Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said the new shipyard project in the Primorye Territory was a landmark project for the country as it will play a big part in Arctic exploration plans, RIA Novosti said.

"The general consensus is that the construction is proceeding at full steam, it is an ambitious, very large project," Rogozin said at a conference during his visit to the Zvezda Shipyards in the town of Bolshoi Kamen in the Far East.  

"Now that the commission's board members have returned from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, we can compare the two largest projects that, in my opinion, lay a new technical foundation for two major industries — missiles and ship-building. Our objectives are clear. Here we see what we formally call import substitution in a broader sense — this is the construction of the largest shipyard in the region," he said.

The deputy prime minister clarified that he was talking primarily about building Arctic gas tankers and supply ships.

On the president's instructions, the Rosneft-Gazprombank consortium, known as Modern Shipbuilding Technologies (STS), is building an industrial and shipbuilding center in the Far East based on the Far Eastern Shipyards facilities with Zvezda Shipayrds in Bolshoi Kamen as the lead company.

On February 1, the Russian government designated Bolshoi Kamen the third priority development area in Primorye.