Freight terminal to be built on Yakutia's Lena River
© RIA Novosti. Anatoly Falamov

Freight terminal to be built on Yakutia's Lena River

There are plans to build a terminal with an annual capacity of handling two million metric tons of freight in Yakutia. The project is to be completed in 2023.

A new freight terminal is under construction on the bank of the Lena River in the town of Nizhny Bestyakh in Yakutia's Megino-Kangalassky District.

"The investment portfolio of the project of the company Nizhny Bestyakh Freight Terminal, due to employ 190 people, is 3.19 billion rubles," the press service of the Ministry for the Development of the Far East and Arctic said in a statement.

A completed 100-meter waterfront wharf is to extend by an additional 200 meters downstream. The wharf will receive a railway for the direct transshipment of containers, equipment and loose materials. Two cranes that can lift 32 metric tons have already been installed, and startup /adjustment operations are in full swing.

Construction of the terminal was launched in the winter of 2017, and the facility became part of the Yakutia priority development area in February 2020. Work is also underway to build a container terminal, a site for bulky loads and a platform for unloading equipment, but construction deadlines remain unclear.

The freight terminal is to reduce transport outlays during Arctic deliveries and also for other consignors and consignees because it will no longer be necessary to deliver freight to the waterfront by truck for subsequent reloading aboard river-going vessels.

Nizhny Bestyakh is a major transport-logistic hub in Yakutia. The town is located on the bank of the Lena River opposite Yakutsk. A railway station is located there, and the Lena and Kolyma federal motorways, as well as the Amga republican road, also intersect inYakutsk. In summer, river-going ships link Nizhny Bestyakh with Yakutsk, and an improvised ice crossing operates here when the river freezes in winter.