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Lithuanian port regains its crown in Baltic Sea

Xinhua, May 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Lithuanian port of Klaipeda became the biggest container port among Baltic states, data released on Wednesday showed.

According to Lithuanian port's authority, the Klaipeda port handled 127,382 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers during the first quarter of the year. Despite a decrease of 13.1 percent compared to the first quarter of 2014, Klaipeda still came out on top, with Latvia's Riga port second with 125,545 TEU's handled in the first quarter.

Vilnius regained the name of the number-one container port among Baltic states after losing it to Riga earlier this year, reported BNS news agency.

The port of Klaipeda has recently attracted some attention from Chinese investors. China Merchants Group, one of the largest state companies of China, had a delegation visiting the port earlier this month. The company said it was interested in investing in the Lithuanian port, according to an earlier interview with Xinhua.

The port of Klaipeda and Lithuanian transportation authorities are actively looking for new markets.

"Lithuania may become Kazakhstan's maritime gateway to the West," said Rimantas Sinkevicius, Lithuania's minister of transport and communications, in a statement during his visit to Kazakhstan earlier this week.

According to Sinkevicius, the goods shipped from Urumqi in China to the port of Klaipeda via the territory of Kazakhstan could be shipped further to central and western Europe, as well as Scandinavian countries.

Last year, TEU traffic in Klaipeda increased by 11.8 percent, to 450,400 containers. The annual port cargo handling capacity is up to 60 million tons. The port claims to be the northernmost ice-free port on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. Endit