Green light for Gdansk

At a meeting in March the PGA presented the development plan for the port. This included expansion of the port and its capacity with more deep-water transhipment quays and the establishment of the Central Port. There are also plans to build a new Ro-Ro terminal in the Outer Port. These projects, as pointed out at the meeting by the CEO of PGA SA, Lukasz Greinke, are in response to the accelerating growth in international trade, in which the role of the Port of Gdansk, especially in meeting the requirements of the Central and Eastern European market, is undeniably growing.

The construction of the Central Port is the first large-scale concept for the development of the Port of Gdansk in 40 years. The project involves reclaiming a large area between the river mouth and its breakwaters and the existing outer port. This will create land and berthing facilities at new deepwater terminals that will be able to handle the largest vessels entering the Baltic Sea. The Central Port will also serve as an infrastructure base that will allow for the further development of the distribution functions at the port for the whole of Central and Eastern Europe.

The concept for building the Central Port has been included in the ‘Strategy of Development of Port of Gdansk by 2027.’ It provides for the creation of terminals equipped with storage facilities, with access to modern civil infrastructure roads and railway tracks, ensuring full capacity to and from the port based on the main axis of land connections in Poland.

The Central Port project will embrace some of the existing infrastructure at the port with part of the reclaimed land also forming the outer protection for the facilities. It is expected that four separate terminal areas will be created with some allocated to container traffic, some to ro-ro traffic and others to specific cargoes such as LNG and oil products.

Gdansk also requires additional ro-ro facilities for the automotive market and these will be developed within the existing North Port in response to the growing importance of Gdansk in this sector. This terminal is to be built close by the existing DCT container terminal.

The overall project also fits into the urban plans for the expansion of road connections with this part of the port. The project provides for routing traffic so as to bypass residential areas. Both projects were fully accepted by the Minister and have been recognised as essential to further increasing the role of the port.

By Dag Pike