Making Gdansk into the Baltic hub

The Maritime Institute in Gdańsk’s (MIG) new report, Hub development perspective in the public and market strategies, produced in partnership with the EU co-financed TransBaltic Extension initiative, says that despite Gdańsk’s success there are shortcomings it needs to address.

Top of the pile is the poor quality of its hinterland connections, particularly rail, which needs to be addressed if the port is to become a true multimodal hub for central eastern European shipments.

Urszula Kowalczyk, head of the economics and law department at MIG, said: “Further development of Gdańsk requires proper actions to meet economic, social and environmental goals. To make this come true, a long-term cooperation between local, national and regional authorities is needed.”

She pointed out that many lessons can be learned from Gothenburg’s Railport Scandinavia shuttle system and from Hamburg, which places emphasis on its combined sea-rail long haul transport.

But this isn’t the only issue Gdańsk needs to address. MIG has said that logistics need to be strengthened and when it comes to port investments, the red tape needs to be reduced making it easier to attract private investment.

Since the 2007 development of Deepwater Container Terminal Gdańsk (DCT), container turnover has risen to 1.15m teu, making it the largest box terminal in the Baltic Sea so it’s important that it gets its act together.

Gdańsk has made the shortlist as one of the TEN-T core ports and it will be looking to this funding as well as support from relevant stakeholders to strengthen its offering to the market.