The giant carriers at the DCT in the Port of Gdansk

03.02.2010

The biggest deepsea container ship in the history of the Gdansk port, "Maersk Taikung", which arrived with the first load of cargo directly from China, launched a weekly service operated by the giant carriers. Until 2 February - when "Svendborg Maersk" docked at the DCT terminal - Gdansk saw the arrival of: "Skagen Maersk", "Sally Maersk" and "Maersk Tanjong", in chronological order. Each of these vessels is over 330 metres long and over 40 metres wide, and has a carrying capacity of about 8,400 TEU's.

The launch of the so-called AE10 service to Gdansk has significantly boosted container turnovers, also using smaller vessels. The feeder services to Russian and Scandinavian ports are provided by container ships operated by both "Maersk" and "Unifeeder", thus implementing the guidelines adopted for the Gdansk port as a container hub on the Baltic Sea. Each coming day brings reports of a significant growth in the cargo volumes handled by the Port of Gdansk. In January, the port handled over a million and a half tonnes of cargo, in which nearly 26,000 TEU's of containerised break-bulk.

Another important factor adding to the increased container throughput was the commissioning of a new Border Veterinary Inspection Post, which was handed over to the veterinary services in January. On 28 January 2010, during the summing-up meeting held at the General Veterinary Inspectorate (GVI) in Warsaw, the FVO inspectors concluded their inspection proceedings. The Border Veterinary Inspection Post in Gdansk received very high assessment scores. The GVI provided the FVO inspectors with documents containing all data necessary to start the approval procedure of the BVIP in the Northern Port, thus complying with all the requirements put forward to the Polish party. PGA SA is now looking forward to prompt completion of the BVIP approval procedure by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection. At the same time, the last limitation will be overcome in terms of the quality standards and the pace of container handling in the right-bank section of the Gdansk port.