Liepaja SEZ Starts $4 Million Cleanup of Former Steelworks Site

FTZ News: 9 heavy-fuel-oil tanks, with a combined capacity of 60,000 cubic meters, are being removed from the former Liepajas Metalurgs site while the Liepaja Special Economic Zone Authority builds the second phase of its industrial park.

Ports Europe reported the project on Oct. 1, citing a Sept. 29 notice from the Liepaja SEZ Authority. The notice puts the job under the EU Cohesion Policy program for 2021–2027 and says the point is to clean land contaminated since the mill years and open it for manufacturing and logistics. SIA A-Land has the contract, signed Aug. 28 for €3.88 million before VAT. Firma L4 is supervising construction. BM-Projekts has the design supervision. Ameco is the environmental consultant.

The tanks go first. Soil and groundwater get treated along the stretch where a section of Eksporta Street is going in. Heating, water, wastewater and storm lines are in the same job. Eksporta Street is also to be connected to Čuguna Street, a continuous road link through the site. The plan calls for the mill’s old slag trolleys to be placed at the center of the roundabout at that corner.

Dainis Kopštāls, A-Land’s construction manager, said the order of the work is the hard part, because the ground has to be cleaned before the pipes and the new road section can go down. A-Land said the work was running ahead of schedule.

Uldis Hmieļevskis, chief executive of the zone authority, said Liepaja firms want more land for production and logistics and that some are already looking at the park for expansion. The authority said it had signed a reservation agreement with Via-S. Metalworking company December Design is also planning a plant in the area.

The park sits between Brīvības, Meldru, Ezermalas, Parka and Zemnieku streets, against Lake Liepaja, which is in the Natura 2000 network. The park’s development strategy targets more than €275 million in private investment and at least 1,500 jobs. Roads and utilities from the earlier phase are already in on other parts of the old mill site. Ports Europe said a filled park could add cargo at the port. The notices do not give a date for the tank removal, and they do not name a tenant for the piece of ground now being cleaned./.


photo: www.liepajniekiem.lv