Port of Gdansk posts strong H1 performance, good outlook for year-end
According to the latest ranking published by the influential British magazine "Container Management", the Gdansk port was ranked the 112th in the world with nearly 930,000 TEUs handled in 2012, the Port of Gdansk Authority's press release said.
The strong performance is attributed largely to operation of Deepwater Container Terminal (DCT) Gdansk. During the first six months of 2013, the facility alone handled 565,622 TEUs. Given the weekly shipping volumes delivered from the Far East as part of the AE 10 Container Service, and following the introduction of Triple-E class container carriers (18,000 TEU) to the service calling at Gdansk, this year's DCT throughput is expected to hit nearly 1.1 million TEUs.
"Consequently, the outlook for the Port of Gdansk to become part of the elite circle of the world's top hundred seaports with the greatest significance seems quite realistic," the Port Authority said.
Over the recent years, coal, the major commodity handled at the port in the 1970s and 1980s, has lost its popularity on the foreign markets. In 2012, a total volume of import and export coal handled by the Gdansk port amounted to slightly more than 1.9 million tonnes. However, this year's forecast, modest as it might appear due to the poor experience of the last decade, was accomplished by the port already in April. Up to the last day of June, the throughput volume reached almost 2.7 million tonnes, of which two-thirds comprised of export coal.
A similarly capricious quality has been characteristic of the liquid fuels market over the last few years. Nearly 4.5 million tonnes transshipped by "Naftoport" during the six months of 2013 account for almost half of the cargo volume handled in 2012 and will contribute to this year's results.
Similarly, statistics concerning grain throughputs show positive outlook, with over half-million tonnes processed over the past two quarters. A dropping tendency has only been observed for aggregate imports (ca. 1.1 million tonnes in the half-year), which was actually predicted by the port's market analysts. While an overall average monthly throughput for all types of cargo in the first half-year of 2012 totaled around 1.8 million tonnes, the first half-year of 2013 has seen the rates exceed 2.3 million tonnes. Thus, a proposition can be made with confidence that the 2011 results, which ranked 4th best in the history of the Gdansk port, as well as its 2012 successful performance, will be outrun by this year's results.
