Business
Georgia Abandons the Single-Investor Model at Anaklia — and Cuts Its Own Funding by Two Thirds
August 18, 2026
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Georgia has scrapped the plan to develop Anaklia deep-sea port through a single strategic investor, replacing it with a landlord model in which the state keeps a controlling stake, the land and the core infrastructure while private operators run individual terminals. Economy Minister Mariam Kvrivishvili has framed the shift as a way to diversify cargo flows and integrate the port into international logistics networks faster. The restructuring lands alongside a less-publicised number: the 2026 budget cut state financing for Anaklia works by 100 million lari, to 50 million.
Two decisions pointing opposite ways
Those two facts sit awkwardly together. A landlord model transfers terminal-level capital expenditure to operators, which reduces what the state must fund directly — so a smaller line item is defensible. But the first phase still requires roughly $200 million of state money for marine infrastructure that no terminal operator will pay for: dredging, breakwater, land reclamation. Cutting the annual allocation to 50 million lari while committing to that figure implies the balance arrives from international financial institutions, and those facilities are not yet signed. Georgia's economy ministry discussed World Bank involvement in the next development phase as recently as July.
The structural change also removes something the single-investor model provided: a counterparty with balance-sheet obligations. Under the abandoned arrangement, a 49 per cent shareholder would have carried defined investment commitments. A landlord port depends on attracting enough operators, individually, to fill the terminals — a harder sell before the breakwater exists.
What is actually being built
Physical work is genuinely underway, which distinguishes this iteration from previous ones. The dredging vessel Tristao Da Cunha has entered the port aquatory, and Belgian marine contractor Jan De Nul — one of the four dominant global dredging firms — holds the contract for seabed deepening and breakwater design and construction under an agreement signed in August 2024. Mobilisation and survey phases are complete, rock armour has been mobilised to site, and production of the specialised X-block units that will armour the breakwater is running.
The engineering targets are specific. Seabed depth goes to 17.5 metres, against a minimum design threshold of 16. The breakwater runs 1,380 metres. Phase one throughput is about 600,000 TEU, roughly 7.8 million tonnes a year, with a nine-phase full build notionally reaching 100 million tonnes. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has put operational start at 2029.
The depth figure is the entire commercial rationale. Poti and Batumi, Georgia's operating Black Sea ports, are not deep-water and can accommodate roughly 65 per cent of commercial vessel classes. Panamax and post-Panamax ships currently calling at Turkish or Russian ports instead represent the cargo Anaklia is designed to capture. Belgian contractor Jan De Nul has described the existing ports as bottlenecks on the Middle Corridor, pairing Anaklia with the Kuryk expansion in Kazakhstan as the two fixes.
The geopolitics that forced the restructure
The single-investor model did not collapse on commercial grounds. A consortium of China Communications Construction Company and China Harbour won the May 2024 tender — as the sole bidder — for a 49 per cent stake and operating control. The investment agreement was never signed. In May 2025 the US House of Representatives passed the Megobari bill, escalating pressure on Tbilisi against awarding a Black Sea deep-water port to Chinese state firms, and a US State Department official was briefed on project progress in March.
Read against that sequence, the landlord model looks less like a logistics optimisation and more like a structure that removes the need to name a single controlling foreign shareholder at all. It lets Georgia keep the asset, keep Western financing conversations open, and defer the ownership question terminal by terminal.
Why the timeline deserves scepticism
Anaklia was promised operational in 2020. It is 2026 and dredging has just begun. Nika Chitadze, professor at the International Black Sea University in Tbilisi and director of the Centre for International Studies, has publicly questioned how far the current 2029 statements will correspond to reality, citing exactly that record.
The financing gap is the concrete risk rather than the rhetorical one. A 50 million lari allocation against a $200 million first-phase requirement means the schedule is contingent on IFI facilities that have not closed. Marine works of this type do not pause cheaply; contractor demobilisation and remobilisation carry costs that compound any funding interruption. And the landlord model's success depends on terminal operators committing before throughput is proven — a sequencing problem every greenfield port faces, made harder by the fact that Turkmenistan and other Central Asian states are already seeking dedicated Black Sea capacity and may not wait.
What to watch
Three markers before year-end. Whether a World Bank or EBRD facility is signed — that is the gate on the 2029 date being credible rather than aspirational. Whether any terminal operator signs a letter of intent, which would validate the landlord model commercially. And whether breakwater construction begins on schedule after dredging, since that is the phase where marine programmes in the Black Sea most often slip past their weather window.
