The Port of Gdansk at the centre of interest of the south of Poland

23.05.2016

Last Friday marked the end of the European Economic Congress - organised for the 8th time already - which was visited by as many as 7,000 people this year. The Congress is one of the most important events in our country and the Port of Gdansk was also present there.

This is the third edition of the event during which the port presented its potential. The visitors had the chance to familiarise themselves with Gdansk's offer in two ways. For the entire duration of the Congress, the port's stand remained at the guests' disposal, visited by numerous companies, mainly from the logistics sector, looking for alternative transport solutions which would guarantee efficient handling of goods with the use of the potential of the Polish handling terminals. The stand was also attended by some special guests, including Mieczyslaw Struk, Marshal of the Pomeranian Region, and Ryszard Swilski, Member of the Board of the Pomeranian Region.

On the second day of the Congress, the visitors had the opportunity to take part in a 1.5-hour long panel dedicated to the Polish seaports. Topics discussed during the panel covered the current situation of port organisms and handling terminals, their position in the European arena, and the prospects for the future. The panelists included Lukasz Greinke - President of the Board of the Port of Gdansk Authority, Jacek Dubicki - Director for Seaports at the OT Logistics Group, Piotr Redmerski - President of the Polish Baltic Shipping Company, Marek Trojnar - Head of the Office of Seaports Strategy and Development at the Szczecin and Swinoujscie Seaports Authority SA, and Professor Krzysztof Rutkowski from the Department of Logistics at the Warsaw School of Economics. The discussion panel also included Krzysztof Kozlowski - Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Maritime Economy and Inland Navigation, who delivered a detailed speech presenting the Ministry's upcoming plans for the development of inland navigation in Poland and a general picture of this type of navigation in other European countries.

The panel was moderated by Professor Wojciech Paprocki, Head of the Transport Enterprise Economics Unit at the Department of Transport at the Warsaw School of Economics. During the panel, his audience had the chance to become familiarised with the directions of development of Polish companies from the maritime sector and thus learn about the reasons for such an intense boom of the maritime economy in the country. The issue of inland navigation and its importance for the development of logistics in countries held up as examples of model development of this branch of transport, including the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, was also raised many times during the discussion. In the countries mentioned above, inland navigation has a share of several dozen percent in the handling of goods. Meanwhile, in Poland, it constituted as little as 0.4% in the incoming and outgoing structure of transport of goods last year.

As President Greinke stressed in the discussion, the Port of Gdansk is already ready to take on an additional stream of transshipments that could be generated by inland navigation. Gdansk's terminals, their handling potential, and the quay infrastructure have parameters which do not have to be modified in any particular manner in this respect.

During the Congress, the offer of the Port of Gdansk also aroused interest in the media world. In the morning of 19 May, listeners of the Polish Radio had the opportunity to listen to a short broadcast with the participation of the President of the Port of Gdansk Lukasz Greinke, Head of the Office of Seaports Strategy and Development at the Szczecin and Swinoujscie Seaports Authority SA Marek Trojnar, and Professor Paprocki from the Warsaw School of Economics. The representatives of the ports briefly presented the current situation in the Polish ports in terms of the handling of coal, which is given particular prominence in Silesia. The significance of the Polish ports for the economy of our country and their position in the context of omnipresent and ever more challenging competition were discussed as well. During the programme, attempts were also made to find an answer to the question of how to further enhance the role of the Polish ports so that their increasingly strong position in the arena of at least the European transport market keeps growing. The participants of the programme presented a consistent stand here, pointing out the need to continue the active investment policy, as it is the key to strengthening the ports as the key transport hubs of our country.

This year's presence of the Port of Gdansk at the European Economic Congress has shown yet again that a visit to the south of Poland is a prerequisite for providing logistics chain participants with knowledge on the current potential of the Polish ports and making them aware that the ports of today are port organisms ready to handle Polish goods and the fruits of the Polish industry, serve Polish entrepreneurs, and more.