Just a few years back the port of Gdynia was the undisputed king of container operations in Poland. Then in 2007 DCT opened for business throwing down a challenge to Gdynia. Just over a year later Maersk made the decision to move from the ICTSI-owned Baltic Container Terminal (BCT) in Gdynia, the major container terminal in the port, to Gdansk, a decision that can now be seen to signal the shape of things to come. Ironically, at the time Maersk\u2019s move was just interpreted as it taking advantage of a good deal at DCT which, after a year of being open for business, was still struggling to attract a major client. Maersk Line moved into DCT and progressively the terminal became a sea of blue with Maersk manifestly the \u2018king pin\u2019 in it.<\/p>\n
From a simple feeder style gateway operation, however, Maersk transitioned to using DCT as a transhipment hub for the Baltic and particularly in conjunction with a direct calls from 18,000 teu vessels operating in Asian trade. Gdansk had the asset of a 650m of quay with a draft alongside of up to 16.5m and of being centrally located in the Baltic to provide a good hub and spoke style distribution point. Maersk\u2019s presence in Gdansk has been the driving force behind the uplift in container volume from 500,000 teu in 2010 to 1.2m teu last year.<\/p>\n
There was in fact a move by G6 at the time of its formation, in 2012, to initiate a direct call by a high capacity vessel at Gdansk and the terminal went so far as to announce the planned commencement of calls. No sooner, however, had this announcement been made than it was withdrawn reportedly due to the non-availability of a suitable berthing slot.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Watershed <\/strong><\/p>\n With the advantage of hindsight this was a watershed moment. This was recognised by BCT which at this time did everything in its power to get G6 to call at Gdynia. It proved not to be possible as the port\u2019s draft and turning circle was unable to accommodate the larger G6 vessels operating in Asian trade. Nevertheless in investment terms BCT went on to prepare for what it describes as the \u201cinevitable arrival of more direct services using larger and larger vessels as the Baltic trade matures\u201d.<\/p>\n Other ports and terminals around the Baltic also recognised the \u2018writing on the wall\u2019 with regard to the need to accommodate high capacity container vessels operating in deep-sea services \u2013 Klaipeda, Lithuania and Tallinn, Estonia being two examples of this.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the Port of Gdynia Authority did not, back at this definitive moment, recognise just how important providing a deeper draft and bigger turning circle would become to Gdynia\u2019s future in the container business. It has only recently scheduled these elements in its development plans and initiation of these works will not happen until 2016.<\/p>\n \u201cI am not sure where their inertia comes from but for sure they are missing the boat \u2013 literally,\u201d says a liner executive active in Baltic trade speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n And if there is any doubt that Gdynia needs to act now to maintain a strong position in the container handling business then it only has to look the few kilometres down the road to Gdansk where DCT\u2019s phase 2 development programme is now in construction mode and where reportedly thinking is already turning to a Phase 3 development that will pile on even more new deep-water capacity.<\/p>\n If Poland\u2019s importers and exporters are to benefit from a competitive ports sector, the Port Authority of Gdynia has to advance its plans on a war footing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Traditionally Gdynia has been Poland\u2019s main container import\/export gateway but slowly and surely this status has been eroded and the recent announcement by the G6 alliance that it intends to implement calls at the Deepwater Container Terminal (DCT) Gdansk can be seen as another way step in this process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":9313,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-9312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post-script"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9314,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9312\/revisions\/9314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9312"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=9312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}