Port of Samsun

Samsun receives general cargo and dry bulk ships, Ro-Ro vessels sailing in the Black Sea, container ships and ships calling at industrial piers. According to statistics from the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, 2,163 calling vessels were recorded in the Samsun harbour master’s area in 2025, and the area handled about 12.8 million tonnes of cargo that year.

Port profile

Samsun sits on the central part of Türkiye’s Black Sea coast. The main terminal is Samsunport, on the shore of the Hançerli neighborhood of the İlkadım district, operated by Samsunport Samsun Uluslararası Liman İşletmeciliği A.Ş. Its services cover container handling, general and bulk cargo, and rail transport.

Besides Samsunport, the harbour master’s area includes industrial piers:

• Toros Tarım Samsun Port: dry and liquid bulk.
• Yeşilyurt Port: general cargo and dry bulk, in the industrial zone at Kutlukent, east of the city.
• Piers of industrial plants such as the Samsun facility of Eti Bakır.

The Ministry’s 2025 Ro-Ro statistics show regular Ro-Ro lines from Samsun to Tuapse and Novorossiysk in Russia.

Vessel traffic and anchorages

Samsun’s traffic is tied to the Black Sea trade: Ro-Ro vessels working with Russian ports, dry bulk and general cargo ships on single voyages, and ships bringing raw materials to the industrial piers. The port is on an open coast. According to the annex to the Ports Regulation, the area of the Samsun Regional Harbour Master has four anchorages off the port:

• No. 1: ships under 1,000 GT.
• No. 2: ships under 5,000 GT not carrying dangerous goods.
• No. 3: ships of 5,000 GT and above not carrying dangerous goods.
• No. 4: ships carrying dangerous goods, ships placed in quarantine and ships gas-freeing.

The managers of ships trading in the Black Sea can be based in many countries outside Türkiye. So the first step in reaching a ship calling at Samsun is finding out who actually manages it.

Which service companies find work at Samsun?

• Ship agents: Ro-Ro lines and tramp ships appoint an agent on every call for port and customs formalities. See ship agents.
• Surveyors: draft surveys and hold inspections for bulk cargo, damage surveys for general cargo. See marine surveyors.
• Ship chandlers: Ro-Ro vessels on regular rotations and bulk carriers waiting at anchor.
• Technical service and spare parts firms: repairs and parts deliveries at berth or at anchor.

How does VesselCall monitor Samsun?

In Outreach you choose a range for Samsun: a radius in nautical miles (nm) measured from the port center. We suggest 10 nm. That circle covers Samsunport, the industrial piers east of the city, the pilot boarding points and all four anchorages off the port. Ships sailing along the coast without calling at Samsun can also pass through the circle; in approval mode you can weed out e-mails to those ships before they are sent.

For every cargo ship, tanker and passenger ship that enters the circle, VesselCall finds the ship manager and sends your introduction e-mail in that company’s language. The language is chosen from the recipient company’s country, and a Turkish back-translation preview lets you check the meaning.

The Data package records port calls at Samsun independently of e-mail sending, and its vessel search shows when a ship was last in Türkiye. Records build up from the day monitoring starts.