Polish Container Ports, New Baltic Hubs?

Abstract

Over the last decade, the Baltic ports have welcomed a remarkable growth, especially oil transportation and containerised flows. The regional container network is mainly made up of feeders services. Consequently, Baltic ports as nodes of a regional maritime network are integrated into a larger system. Indeed, the port development and the evolution of maritime traffic are symptomatic of economic and territorial mutations. In this context, the Polish ports, Gdansk and Gdynia, were originally mainly connected to the Polish hinterland and Central European market. They are now becoming new transhipment ports for the regional traffic. It is especially the case for Gdansk which recorded considerable and continued growth in container traffic during the last years. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the activity of the polish container ports and examine their role and position in the Baltic and European container network. This study is based on a literature review and mainly on the analysis of a statistical database as well as using Automatic Identification System data.