China and Russia are going to work together to develop a new deepwater port in Zarubino, the biggest in Northeast Asia, to improve the logistics capacity due to the close trade relations between the two countries, People’s Daily Online reported on Wednesday, Nov 26.

An ice-free port, Zarubino Port is located in the Far East region of Russia, 18 kilometers from the China-Russia border. A railway route connects the port with Hunchun, a major city of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in China's Jilin province.

The initiative came from when Jilin province and the Russian Summa Group agreed to jointly build up the Zarubino Port on the basis of an agreement signed by the Chinese and Russian government at the fourth Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), held in Shanghai this May.

The port, according to the deputy president of Summa Group–Russia’s largest harbor Management Company, will be put into use by 2018, with a cargo handling capacity of 60 million tons.

The multifunctional port will hugely benefit China and Russia, particularly for Jilin’s agriculture commodities, experts said, adding that it is expected to serve as a vital food port for the two countries, ensuring food security.

The project will get started in 2016 and the total investment will be around $1bn, reported People’s Daily Online.