The Ostuferhafen is now Kiel's busiest sector after ferry and cruise shipping. Big ships leave the East Bank daily for destinations including Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Some ?60m have been ploughed into the Ostuferhafen since 1985, ?36m of that into Stage Four construction. The previous expansion projects created 925m of quays on 10m of water with an outdoor storage area of 82,000m 2, covered shed space of 20,000m 2and silos for 120,000 tons.

They also created railway sidings and handling facilities for rising combined road/rail traffic.

Port officials said just last year they were also now considering a broad-gauge railcar handling facility at the Ostuferhafen to attract Russian rail ferries.

Only Sassnitz-Mukran in east Germany currently has that extraordinary capability.

Stage Four expansion, Port Director Jorg Rudel indicated, had been the most important step of them all for the Ostuferhafen and 'a development milestone' for Kiel. Finally, the ruins of the Kilian submarine bunker, the German war memorial in the Bay of Kiel, had given way to inevitable terminal expansion.

Kiel was now looking forward and 'our job is to shape the future while remaining conscious of our past', Rudel said.

The decision to bury the wartime bunker and build an expanded Ostuferhafen on top of it was made in 1999 after a long legal battle between port authorities and relatives of people who died and are still buried in the bunker. Ruins still visible above the surface of the Bay of Kiel were then blown up, bunker foundations were filled with sand and the rubble was used as surfacing material for new facilities.

The first sheet piling was driven in May 2000 and 1.5,000,000m 3of sea sand were fed into the retained area. Port officials said that during Stage Four construction, partly funded by the EU, 50,000 tons of steel were brought in for more than 600m of sheet piling.

A plaque at the entrance to the Ostuferhafen now commemorates the Kilian bunker, the ruins of which today lie under the terminal's 12 new hectares of land. There are 615m of new quayside with three berths. Berth 1is 215m long and on 14m of water while the new Berths Two and Three are 200m long and on 10 m water depths. An additional 80,000m 2of storage area is now also available.

Two further berths are planned later and when completed they will point a new Ostuferhafen finger further out into the Bay of Kiel.

A consortium grouping Heinrich Hirdes, Kiel/Rostock, Bilfinger + Berger Bau and Philipp Holzmann, Hamburg, was responsible for some of the dredging, pile-driving, reinforced steel work and submarine bunker demolition.

A second consortium grouping Hochtief Civil in Bremen, Aug Prien in Hamburg and Heinrich Hecker in Oldenburg handled further dredging, water engineering, sand delivery and deep sealing.

Specialist firms documented the U-Boot bunker and the area was checked for unexploded bombs and munitions before and during construction.

MJ Information No: 17437