The overloaded state of Russia’s ports demands serious capital outlays in the development of their infrastructure. One such project involves Tuapse Port’s construction of a bulk terminal for transshipping fertilizer, which was launched by EuroChem, one of Russia’s leading producers of fertilizer. However, the project ran into public resistance in the city. Public criticism, which was spearheaded by several Municipal Council deputies, boiled down to concerns about the terminal’s environmental safety and a lack of reliable information about the project. Most importantly, municipal authorities felt that the company’s “environmental line [lacked] a general concept or a united strategic line” (in the words of Tuapse Mayor G. Prilutsky expressed to the Volnaya Kuban newspaper).

The situation unraveled further when another terminal was proposed for the Tuapse Port. This terminal was designed to store and transship liquefied natural gas. Since local residence viewed liquefied natural gas as a potentially dangerous product, NOPE activists became involved in city protests. Public meetings against the project began, and a wave of complaints poured into both the kray administration and local oversight agencies. Company officials responsible for the “gas” project terminal permitted themselves a number of public statements about the irrelevance of local opinion, which only further flamed the public protests. And even though EuroChem was in no way related to this project, city residents did not bother to make a distinction between the two terminals.

The conflict resulted in a decision to repeal the mayor’s earlier resolution approving the location of EuroChem’s bulk terminal. The company ended up being back where it started, having to launch the approval process all over again. The agency was invited to help resolve the situation. The main criterion was that the company’s bulk terminal project had to successfully pass the required public hearings procedure.

A preliminary diagnosis conducted by the agency showed that despite the kray administration’s adoption of a policy concept aimed at developing Tuapse into an industrial center (this conception was what allowed the port’s economic development to begin in the first place), residents and a number of local government officials were convinced that Tuapse was a resort town that required a recreational rather than an industrial development concept. Taking this into account, a new concept of the Tuapse Port zone’s development was worked out and presented to the public, one that combined both recreational and industrial elements.

This approach was implemented by using the examples of previous such joint-use experiences in Mediterranean countries (particularly France and Spain), where major European ports (Marseille, Barcelona, Tarragona) do not hinder the port cities’ recreational economies. Key conditions for this to work involved not only the unquestionable adherence to safety regulations (the bulk terminal was in complete compliance with these from the start), but also a balanced environmental load. In the case of EuroChem’s project, this meant that in exchange for its reacquisition of the original port territory (even though construction was slated for an abandoned industrial zone of the port), the company would help restore the recreational potential of the port’s other territories. In particular, the company assumed the obligation of liquidating a huge underground oil "lens", which resulted from the bombing of the port’s tanker fleet at the start of the Great Patriotic War, and which constantly polluted a large portion of Tuapse Harbor. The set of environmental measures proposed by the company also included the creation of a city-run environmental monitoring system.

The company further assumed the obligation of resettling the residents of a building that was partially located in the port’s sanitary protection zone, which would relieve city authorities of this responsibility. By the time new public hearings were held, the company had also released its first corporate social responsibility report, which was called A Key to Success and covered the 2001-2005 period. The report was prepared according to international Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Global Compact UN standards. Among other items, it explained the company’s environmental protection policy and the priority lines of its internal and outside social investments.

The company’s social policy priorities outlined in the report included such items as the company’s willingness to cooperate with the region in which its enterprises were based. The report also covered various company employment issues (workers’ salaries, labor conditions, social programs). The latter was important from the standpoint that the company was willing to staff the new terminal with local employees, thus improving the city’s employment level. While advancing its new concept and demonstrating the development of its social responsibility system, the company also made an effort to distinguish the two terminal projects in the public conscience.

Since the EuroChem project was objectively more "environmentally acceptable" to the locals (for a number of irrational reasons, such as, on the "explosion hazard") than the "gas" terminal, these two projects’ comparison helped present the bulk terminal – and its merits – in a favorable light. Moreover, this comparison was also conducive to highlighting the distinction between the positions adopted by the two companies: while the "gas" terminal’s client consolidated its image of a company that ignored public opinion, EuroChem had unfurled a detailed information sharing campaign, urging the public and opinion leaders to express their views about the project.

The environmental concept presented by the company filled a missing link in the project, "fitting it into" the city’s general development plan. The company demonstrated itself to be a socially responsibly business. First of all, it presented itself as a company that thinks along local community development lines, refusing to limit its vision simply to the project’s framework. Second of all, it showed itself as a company that was ready to take public opinion into account, and to fully disclose all relevant information to the populations. And third of all, it proved itself to be both open to – and able to gain from – public criticism.

All of these circumstances improved public trust in the company. The company presented its updated fertilizer transshipments terminal project to the public in the city of Tuapse on December 15, 2005. The public hearings involved a review of the company’s "Notice of Intent to Proceed with Investment in the Construction to the Tuapse Bulk Terminal", as well as its environmental impact assessment of the project. More than 150 people took part in the hearings: deputies from the Krasnodar Kray Legislative Assembly, City Council deputies, representatives of Tuapse’s social, political and environmental organizations, as well as city residents. The hearings’ participants accepted the company’s proposals, which were aimed at restoring the port’s environmental balance, and withdrew their opposition to the terminal’s construction. This decision was especially valuable since it was reached exclusively by means of public persuasion and adopted within the framework of a constructive dialogue.