Market giants at the Port of Gdańsk

25.02.2015

All indications show that 2015 will be no less interesting or promising for the Port of Gdańsk than the record year of 2014.

Today it has been officially announced that once again the Port of Gdańsk has taken second place in the Baltic Sea in terms of the number of containers handled and seventh place in terms of the size of the total cargo handled. Just two months after the end of an extremely successful period in the history of the Port of Gdańsk, 2015 welcomes yet another important event.

This year on February 19th, the Majestic Maersk docked at the current largest container terminal in the Baltic - DCT Gdańsk - initiating what had been promised a few months earlier, that is the joint servicing of two giants on the world container market - Maersk and MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company). This is the first event of its kind in Poland. Last year these giants entered into a 10 year agreement to form an alliance functioning on the market as 2M.

Such a decision should not have caused too much of a surprise, since in an era of increasingly difficult market conditions, shipping companies often decide to consolidate their global container businesses through alliances. This solution allows enormous cargos to be loaded and shipped closer to their final destinations.

This trend has also been accompanied by the shipowners' usage of larger vessels which, on the one hand, allows for additional savings, and on the other hand restricts the list of ports to which large units can be shipped. An increasingly important role, therefore, is played by ports adapted to handle large vessels that are at the same time centres with the status of hubs. One such centre is the Port of Gdańsk, which has for the last 5 years regularly welcomed ocean liners connecting the distant port of Shanghai with Poland. Each week on their way they call at ports such as Busan and Gwangyang in Korea, the Chinese port of Ningbo, Yantian, Hong Kong, as well as Singapore, Tanjung Pelepas in Malaysia, British Felixstowe, Dutch Rotterdam, German Bremerhaven and Danish Aarhus.

The last decade has proved to be extremely successful in the history of the Port of Gdańsk. Undoubtedly, this gradual and continuous development of the Port of Gdańsk is the result not only of the superb condition of the Polish economy, but also the confidence of customers, wise investments and a forward-looking strategy which, as shown by the events of this year, has attracted to Gdansk the greatest giants on the market. These giants, who have observed here convenient and auspicious conditions for the development of their maritime business, are at the same time making the Port of Gdańsk more and more of a threat with each passing year and a worthy opponent in the Baltic basin.