Freeport of Riga

In 2012, the Freeport of Riga took fourth place in overall cargo turnover among the ports of the eastern Baltic (after Primorsk, St. Petersburg and Ust-Luga) and third place in container freight turnover (after St. Petersburg and Klaipeda).

History

Since its foundation, Riga was primarily a trading and transshipment point, so its development was directly related to maritime trade. The first harbor for settlement was the so-called Riga lake – the extension of the river Daugava.

In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, the city's main port moved to the Daugava. The basis of commodity turnover at this time was fabrics, metal, salt and fish. Over the next 150 years, the city passed successively into the hands of the Rzeczpospolita (1582), Sweden (1629) and Russian Empire (1721). In the Russian Empire, the port played an important role: at the beginning of the 20th century it occupied third place among the state's ports in terms of foreign trade and first in timber exports. During each of the world wars, the city fell under German occupation. Before that, the port equipment was evacuated, and some buildings were destroyed. During the years of Soviet power, the port expanded: the container terminal, built in the early 1980s on the island of Kundziņsala, at the time of commissioning was one of the largest in the USSR.

With the arrival of Latvia's independence, the modern history of the port began.