Railway policy of Derince Port seems to change after the privatization.

The new owner of part, Safi Derince International Port Operator, started to request additional fees for a couple of services which affected the railway transports. New fees are as follows:

Handling fees from/to wagons increased to 6 USD/to.

25 USD/truck as port entry fee and 12 USD/truck as weighing fee started to be collected from trucks.

TCDD is requested to pay fee for wagons loaded/unloaded  to/from ferry.

It had been not easy to compete with railway transports transhipped at Cerkezkoy for Derince. Thus, railway transportation where transhipment is done at Derince will now even more expensive and harder to compete. Even the loads prefered to tranship at Asian side will probably be taken to Kosekoy.

The biggest load being transhipped at Derince from/to wagons is Transfesa’s Renault trains with a frequency upto 4 trains/week.

A solution may be usage of back of port by TCDD and constructing a new ramp with new rail connections. Of course this is expensive and will take time.

Although several ports around Izmit are next to railway line, most of them hesitate to get connected. They don’t want to split their limited port areas with long trains. TCDD, on the contrary, used to be very supportive for railway loads by requesting lower fees for services in port, compared with the ones in other terminals. Thus, Derince Port had been the leading port for railway loads.

The new owner’s long term plans and strategy about port and railway loads are not known yet.