2017-07-17

Strategic swinging area

The bid submitted by Porr Warszawa was selected as the most advantageous bid in the tender procedure for the development of swinging area No. 2 in the Port of Gdynia, a strategic project for the future of this port. The swinging area, which will be modified as part of the investment project titled “Dredging of the approach fairway and internal basin of the Port of Gdynia – Stage 1”, is scheduled to be completed at the beginning of 2018. It is assumed that it will provide access to ships with a length of up to 400 m, whereas currently it supports container ships with a length up to 240 m. Forecasts indicate that the lack of possibility to support large vessels would result in a more than 40% drop in container turnover within the next 5 years.

Porr SA undertook to perform the contract for a lump-sum price of over PLN 27.7 million gross, which was the lowest among all 6 submitted bids. The Port of Gdynia Authority S.A. planned to spend more than PLN 41 million gross to implement the investment. The project involves, inter alia, the demolition of pier No. 3 with a length of 240 m, the so-called Guest Quay, purchased by the Port of Gdynia Authority from the Polish Navy Shipyard in January 2014. The project applied for EU co-financing from the Operational Programme Infrastructure and Environment 2014-2020.

Additional investment aimed to improve the parameters of the seaport in Gdynia are also planned to be implemented in the years 2018-2020. The competencies of the Maritime Office in Gdynia include extending the external approach fairway to 280 metres and dredging it to 17 metres, whereas the Port of Gdynia Authority will dredge basins inside the port to 16 metres, extend the entrance to the internal port to approximately 140 metres and modify quays adjacent to the Port Channel.

While waiting for the port to be dredged and extended, bases located there, i.e.: the Baltic Container Terminal and the Gdynia Container Terminal, have made costly investments to expand their own infrastructure and purchase equipment, with considerable co-financing from EU funds. The BCT invested PLN 220 million, including PLN 65 million of EU co-financing; as for the GCT, expenditures totalled PLN 190 million, including PLN 67 million of EU co-financing. In total, the port authority and terminals have invested more than PLN 1 billion in the last 4 years. Due to these investments, the port’s container handling capacity has increased up to approximately 2 million TEU per annum – with an option for further development. At present, the total length of container quays amounts to 1,612 metres, whereas the area of storage yards totals 54 hectares. Both terminals have 14 quay cranes (including 7 with a reach that allows for handling 19 and 22 container rows on-board vessels) and 34 yard cranes. There are also 2 railway terminals with a total track length of over 3.5 km. With the current cargo handling volume, only one-third of this capacity is being utilised. Therefore, ocean-going container ships could be handled practically “immediately”, provided that swinging area No. 2 is extended to 480 metres and the internal port entrance is extended to 140 metres.

One of the panels at the Maritime Economy Forum Gdynia 2017 shall be dedicated to seaports.

Article developed in cooperation with  "Namiary na Morze i Handel" magazine.

phot. Tadeusz Urbaniak/ZMPG-a S.A