Anaklia switched to a landlord model, and still has no named operator

In July 2026 the government adopted what is usually called a landlord model for Anaklia: the state builds and owns the core infrastructure — the breakwater, the dredged approach, the basic works — and private companies then develop and run the individual terminals under long-term leases or concessions. That replaces the 2023 arrangement, under which a state company would have held 51% and a private concessionaire 49%; a consortium led by China Communications Construction Company was selected under that scheme in 2024 and attracted a good deal of criticism. Port Consultants Rotterdam is now updating the master plan, which will fix the terminal layout and phase the build against actual cargo demand rather than against a single fixed design.

The first stage is put at roughly $1.1 billion, with about $700 million expected from the state and about $400 million from private investors, and the government has said the landlord model calls for a further $200 million. Funding talks with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have been announced. The target is the first vessel in 2029, and some people in the industry are openly sceptical of that date; the wider $7 billion state transport modernisation programme, which is supposed to connect the port to upgraded rail and road, runs to 2032. For scale, the mega-port plan floated about a decade ago carried a price tag of around $2.5 billion, roughly double what is being spent now.

Marine work has picked up since the new plan was announced, with dredging and breakwater construction going on at the same time and the Belgian contractor Jan De Nul putting a second dredger on the job. The target water depth is about 17.5 metres, which is the whole point of the project: it is what lets ships call here that Poti and Batumi cannot take. Phase one is planned with up to 700 metres of deepwater container berths and up to 600 metres of jetty-type berths for dry and bulk cargo. What is still missing is the name on the terminal. No operator has been confirmed. APM Terminals, part of Maersk, has said it is not interested in Anaklia and is concentrating on Poti, where in September 2026 its local administration head said talks on deepwater berths were expected to resume by the end of the year after years of delay. Other names have been floated — AD Ports and DP World from the UAE, MSC's Terminal Investment Limited, CMA CGM's CMA Terminals — and MSC's Georgian arm has said it is waiting to see the terms, with one of its supervisory board members pressing for international tenders to open soon.

If you own property, run a business or move cargo on this coast, the opening date is the least informative number in the story. Two things are worth tracking. The first is whether an international terminal tender actually opens and who bids: until an operator signs, the berths are concrete without a customer. The second is Poti, which is the live market rather than the future one — it moved 404,760 TEU in the first seven months of 2026, up 7% year on year, across 253 container vessels, and any restart of its deepwater berth talks changes the picture sooner than Anaklia will. Treat announcements about 2029 as intent, and treat signed leases and tender results as information.