Leading Chinese shipping company, COSCO, wants to include the southern Croatian seaport of Ploce in its business plans in order to establish regular shipping connections, giving the opportunity for the Ploce Port to become an import-export destination in 2019, the director of COSCO's regional office, Vladimir Lekic, said in Sarajevo on Tuesday.

COSCO owns the third largest shipping fleet in the world and currently does business with the Port of Rijeka, where it has been present since 2009, as well as Slovenia’s Koper port for freight transport to central European countries.

In 2016, COSCO bought a majority ownership package in the Greek Port of Piraeus, which has become the company’s main Mediterranean hub for freight transport.

Smaller ships then transport freight containers to Adriatic ports and COSCO wants to add Ploce to its list of destinations from where it will be able to service the growing demand in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

COSCO Shipping Lines Co., Ltd, headquartered in Shanghai, is an enterprise specially engaged in international and domestic container shipping and related services. Its fleet comprises 1,118 vessels with a total capacity of 92 million tonnes of freight. To date it has invested in 51 port terminals around the globe.

“We expect a lot in the coming period on the market in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Lekic told reporters, adding that imports and exports to and from Bosnia and Herzegovina have recorded a constant growth over the past five years.

Lekic said that negotiations were underway for Ploce to be established as a freight container terminal. The idea is to establish regular train freight container transport which would revitalise railway connections toward Bosnia and Herzegovina which is now occasionally used for freight trains.

Follow N1 via mobile apps for Android | iPhone/iPad | Windows| and social media on Twitter | Facebook.