The Port of Gdansk at the Fracht Intermodal Transport Forum

11.04.2016

Just like last year, the Port of Gdansk Authority SA was a partner of the Fracht Intermodal Transport Forum, which took place in Gdansk this year for the fourth time.

This two-day long event, which has been attracting representatives of the transport industry, including the maritime economy sector, as well as representatives of companies from the land transport sector, railway carriers, freight forwarding agents and academic institutions for four years now, was inaugurated on 7 April with a ceremonial cruise around the waters of the Port of Gdansk.

During the two-hour visit, about 150 guests had the opportunity to learn the latest news about Gdansk port, learn about its current potential and see the progress of the numerous investments in the port's infrastructure from the water.

On the next day, the Forum's participants discussed topics connected mainly with intermodal transport during 3 panel sessions: Integration and cooperation of intermodal transport participants, Funding intermodal projects from the new EU perspective 2014-2020, and Poland and international transport corridors.

During the Forum, participants had the chance to familiarise themselves with the latest report of the Office of Rail Transport, which stated with absolute certainty that 2015 went down in history as a successful year in terms of intermodal transport. The year recorded an increase of as much as 8% in the load weight of freight carried by intermodal transport, a 9% increase in intermodal transport performance and an increase of nearly 7% in the number of units transported. In total, the share of intermodal transport in Poland last year was 4.6%. This is still a very small percentage compared to other European countries. However, intermodal transport is growing more and more each year. As a reminder, only 10 years ago - in 2005, the share of this type of transport was just 0.8%.

Aware of the increasing role of intermodal transport, the Port of Gdansk dedicated a lot of space to the improvement of railway infrastructure at the port in its investment programme for the coming years, in order to activate intermodal transport, among other things. As emphasised by Ryszard Mazur, Head of the Strategy and Development Department, who represented the Port of Gdansk, the current results that Gdansk manages to achieve result from a consistent development strategy, in which investments such as the construction of the deepwater container terminal or the cable-stayed bridge - controversial at the time - were the subject of criticism and doubts for many people.

Today, as the reality shows, thanks to those investments, and many other future infrastructure projects, the importance of Gdansk's port continues to grow effectively, not only in the Baltic, but also the European arena.

The two-day long forum was concluded by a debate dedicated to the subject of transport corridors, in terms of which Poland's position in Europe is growing ever stronger.