The Port For Belarusian Cargo In Murmansk Has Been Postponed For Years
1- 2.10.2026, 10:35
The transportation infrastructure is not ready to handle the projected volume of cargo.
It will take several more years to build the Belarusian port in the Kola Bay. The project is being held up by the limited capacity of the transportation routes leading to the port of Murmansk. This was stated by Artem Kuksa , First Deputy Minister of Arctic Development and Economy of the Murmansk Region .
Information about the construction of a multimodal Belarusian port in the Kola Bay first emerged in April 2024, according to Office Life. At that time, following two years of negotiations between Belarus and Russia, the Murmansk Oblast government signed an agreement with LLC “Sea Terminal ‘Gateway to the Arctic’” to build a terminal for transshipping Belarusian cargo.
This legal entity, with a charter capital of 180 million Russian rubles, was registered on April 1, 2024, in the village of Mishukovo (Kola District). Of this, 99% of the LLC is owned by the Belarusian company “Logistic Energy,” and the remaining 1% is owned by Belarusian citizen Nelly Malyarova. She also owns “Logistic Energy.” The terminal’s CEO is a Belarusian—Andrei Bunakov, former deputy chairman of “Belneftekhim” and former head of “Belshina.”
“The railroad is not designed to handle such a volume of cargo”
The amount of investment in the project has not been disclosed. The port was planned to be multimodal, with the capacity to accommodate a container terminal. It will handle bulk cargo, as well as mineral fertilizers and petroleum products. The expected cargo transshipment volume is up to 25–30 million metric tons per year. The facility was scheduled to begin operations in 2028.
However, according to Artem Kuksa, when they began working out the details of the Belarusian port’s construction, it turned out that the capacity of the rail access routes to the Murmansk port’s terminals was insufficient. Therefore, local authorities are currently determining the scope of work required to develop the transportation hub’s rail network, the associated costs, and the implementation mechanism for the project to expand the railroad’s capacity to accommodate projected cargo flows.
The infrastructure is planned to be expanded as part of a new comprehensive Arctic development project currently being developed in Russia. This will allow for an increase in the shipment of goods through the port of Murmansk, including goods from Belarus.
Currently, a Belarusian terminal owned by a private investor is already under construction in Murmansk alongside the modernization of the port itself, and this work will take several years, noted the first deputy minister: “While it is being built, cargo still needs to be transshipped. Therefore, we are using existing facilities in parallel to begin fine-tuning and analyzing these logistics so that they operate smoothly. And then we’ll switch them over to the new route.”
“We want to change the tariff policy regarding Belarusian shippers”
In addition, to make shipping through the local port more attractive to Belarusian shippers, the Murmansk Region government is lobbying federal authorities to change the tariff policy. Currently, transiting goods to the Baltic ports is cheaper than shipping them northward. In any case, as the first deputy minister emphasized, revising the calculations is a process that is “neither simple nor quick.”
Nevertheless, the northern route is in demand among Belarusian companies. For example, in March of this year, amid difficult ice conditions in the Gulf of Finland, the Murmansk Bulk Terminal ensured the transshipment and shipment to China of Belarusian potash that had been rerouted from the Baltic Sea.
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