New companies are set to find their homes in Kundziņsala, owned by the Port of Rīga. It will be one of the largest investment projects in Rīga and its suburbs by 2030, Latvian Radio reported on 9th January.

It is planned that seven new companies will start operating in Kundziņsala – cargo terminals, logistics centres, energy companies, and smart manufacturing facilities, which will create 800 new jobs, and state, port, European and private investments will reach at least EUR 500 million. With the decline in transit cargo volumes, ports need to reorient themselves towards other areas of development.

Ansis Zeltiņš, manager of the Freeport of Rīga, said that a suitable industrial environment for the development of wind technology and the production of its components will be created on a 30-hectare site in Kundziņsala, and that this area will be leased to at least two tenants.

This year, a new port access control point will also be established, ensuring the digital flow of cargo data.

“The State Real Estate Agency is building a completely new customs, border guard, and Food and Veterinary Service control hub, which will be located in Kundziņsala. In addition to all this, we are also moving forward with one of the largest investment projects in the history of the Port of Rīga, which is focused on renewable energy resources and renewable energy,” said Zeltiņš.

He said that the project has attracted €65 million in European funding and approximately €20 million in funding from the port’s own resources.

Over the next three years, a completely new port infrastructure will be created in the northern part of Kundziņsala, and several manufacturing companies will be located there.

“It is clear that the production facilities will create new jobs. Last year, a series of public procurement contracts were concluded, which are currently related to the further development of road, water supply and sewerage infrastructure, and this year we will begin to implement all of the main sections related to cargo areas and the construction of a completely new pier in the northern part of Kundziņsala,” said Zeltiņš.

Another important aspect is that the Riga City Council’s project for a traffic bridge from Tvaika Street to Kundziņsala will also be completed in the second half of this summer, and the new bridge over Sarkandaugava will be put into operation. Together with the Eastern Highway, this will significantly reduce the flow of trucks through the city centre.

Former Minister of Transport Tālis Linkaits believes that due to the decline in transit cargo, all three of Latvia’s largest ports – Riga, Liepāja, and Ventspils – must seek new directions for development.

“In my opinion, the decision by the Freeport of Riga to develop its territory into an industrial park to attract new manufacturing plants and logistics centers is logical, and the chosen location – the Kundziņsala area – is actually the most promising, as the state, together with the free port, is already building a convenient road transport connection, the Tvaika Street overpass, and the state has also allocated European Union funds to the free port. At the moment, the project is still in its early stages of development, and the task of the Riga Free Port is to create the conditions for private entrepreneurs to enter the market,” said Linkaits.

He also emphasised that “whether these companies will actually come there will depend on how the geopolitical situation around us develops, but I think this is the right direction.”

Pēteris Strautiņš, an economist at Luminor Bank, assessed that Latvia’s largest ports are increasingly focusing not on cargo handling, but on using the historic port areas for other purposes, as is already being done in Ventspils and Liepāja, and this is also a good development opportunity for the port of Rīga.

“The only important export sector in Rīga is business and information technology services, but the broader the city’s export base, the more diverse it will be, and the better,” said Strautiņš.

“The territory of the Freeport of Rīga makes up a sufficiently large part of the city, with large, contiguous areas that already have some infrastructure in place, where production facilities that require large areas could be located, and which would also greatly benefit from the possibility of immediately receiving raw materials or loading finished products onto ships for transport,” said Strautiņš.

The Port of Rīga is the largest port in Latvia in terms of cargo volume, handling 18 million tonnes of cargo in 2024 and 16.4 million tonnes in the first 11 months of last year.

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