Kalistani Major History

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Port Elga Expansion Started
Sulari Shipping Consortium to take over operation of Shipyard
Sulari, Duchy of Suldanor
January 18, 5528


Port Elga Shipyard, which services both commercial and military vessels will be upgraded

Major upgrades to the ship yards at Port Elga, Sulari are in the works, as the ship building operations there are set to be privatized. "KALMILINCO has operated the shipyards in Port Elga since its founding," said Lionel Roberts, of the new investment group Sulari Shipping Consortium, (KalSiE: SSC). "To this effect, Port Elga has primarily served as a service port for military and commercial vessels. Most ship building operations still take place in Kaliburg. But KALMILINCO has been instructed by the Acting Minister of Defense to divest the Shipyard, so that commercial and military construction can be compartmentalized. Military construction will remain at Kaliburg, while commercial construction will be concentrated at Port Elga."

To accommodate the commercial operations, the new consortium has proposed a multi-billion ruble facilities expansion at Port Elga. "Port Elga is well situated at the terminus of the industrial transport infrastructure on the Mainland," said Roberts. "SSC was formed specifically to bring capital in to leverage this existing network to improve the commercial production facilities and expand the servicing port. The expansion, which will take place over the next three years, will greatly increase our ability to build large scale container ships, tanker vessels and supply ships without interrupting the Military construction schedule." Roberts estimates that the new facility, with state of the art technology, will have construction berths for 7 ships, producing new container ships in just over 15 months. "We will also be constructing a pre-fabrication plant onsite to aid in ship building, which should speed our construction processes up, and get us closer to 12 month from start to finish."

Roberts also said that the pre-fabrication plant will have metal press in it to produce shipping containers. "One thing we are seeing in Kalistani shipping is a shortage of shipping containers," said Roberts. "While this signifies a positive balance of trade, on the one hand, it also is a problem in that it bottlenecks our international exports. So our aim is to supply more than a million new containers to the market over the next 10 years. This way, we can cut lead time on demand from order to delivery by as much as two months."

SSC is a relatively new company which represents more than ₭10 billion of initial capitalization. "The Consortium won the bid in a closed bidding process because not only do we have a strong backing from private investment, but a significant buy in from both the Free City of Sulari, and the Port Elga Authority, which maintains and operates the port for the Duchy," said Roberts. "The public money in partnership ensures that both the Duchy and the National Government will have a stake in operations and profitability. For example, as part of the buy in and negotiations, SSC agreed to partial public financing through the National Bank, which includes a set of accounting and transparency laws that are not normally required by the Bank of Suldanor (KalSiE: BOS). We also will be providing reports semi-annually to the Ministry of Infrastructure, and will be still coordinating with KALMILINCO and KALNAFERCO to ensure that the Nation's priorities come first in our production. After that, though, SSC is free to operate for profit and to ensure the highest quality of production to our customers, both domestic and international."

The cautious move toward privatization comes as the Former ReNew dissolves, but the Empress has expressed cautious endorsement to an incremental expansion of the economy to keep pace with Kalistan's neighbors. "The National Government, and Her Imperial Majesty specifically, has called for parity with neighboring countries where possible, and Kalistan has a competitive advantage in a few areas so, this sector is primed for growth, said Roberts. "We will be doing another couple rounds of stock sales that are open to international investors in the next year, and we encourage anyone looking to buy into Port Elga to do so." The expansion, when completed in 5531, will employ more than 8,000 workers in Sulari, and will spur follow on economic activity in the city such as home building, small scale infrastructure projects, city and service expansion, and related service sector job growth.