A new regular container line appeared at the Szczecinskie Quay at the Port of Gdansk. According to the port authority, the Samskip shipping company is introducing a weekly connection between Gdansk and the ports of Denmark and Norway. The Port Gdanski Eksploatacja company will take care of handling the cargo.
Thanks to the cooperation of Port Gdanski Eksploatacja and the Samskip company, the Szczecinskie Quay at the Port of Gdansk will handle the container connection between Scandinavia and Poland. Samskip's containers will transport frozen fish to Gdansk and export construction materials and consumer goods from Poland. The service is also adapted to handle oversize cargo in specialised containers.
"A revival of the inner part of the Port of Gdansk is one of our priorities. This is why we are redeveloping the quays along the Martwa Wisla River and dredging the port fairway. It is a particularly sensitive place at the Port - with a limited capability on account of its depth and width. We are happy that the cooperation between PGE and Samskip will significantly contribute to the revival. It shows that the transshipment of containers does not need to be limited only to the deepwater part of the Port," explains Marcin Osowski, Vice-President of the Board and Director of Infrastructure at the Port of Gdansk Authority.
Two vessels owned by Samskip will call at the Szczecinskie Quay in turns - one will arrive at the Port of Gdansk every Friday.
"The choice of the place where the container ship will call is not accidental. The transport service offered by Samskip will compete with motor vehicles. As the main transshipment operator within the area of the Port of Gdansk, we can shape logistics processes at the Inner Port. We believe that this will be a beginning of a fruitful, long-term cooperation for both the Port of Gdansk and the Samskip and PGE companies," explains Radoslaw Stojek, President of PGE.
As part of the service, goods will be transported to Oslo, Aarhus, Tananger, Bergen, and Alesund, where Samskip has a cold storage hub. The Port of Aarhus in Denmark is a place where goods are transshipped to a container shipping service to Reykjavik. Another stop on the route from Scandinavia to Poland will be Hamburg, from where the container ships will enter the Baltic Sea through the Kiel Canal.
"We are very pleased to be able to offer our customers the first multimodal product with such range, travelling from the Baltic Sea to Norway. Norway is a vast country, where the cost of transport is often high. The sea shipping service from Gdansk, as part of which Samskip provides door to door deliveries, is an alternative to road transport given the transportation time, the advantageous cost structure, and lower impact on the environment. We hope that the service will help Polish exporters expand further in Norway," says Filip Chajecki, Managing Director of Samskip in Poland.
The Samskip company comes from Iceland, with headquarters located in Rotterdam. The company's management has already recognised the potential of cooperation with the Port of Gdansk before, which resulted in the opening of a business office in Gdansk in 2017. The company provides transport services on commercial shipping lines from Poland to Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, Norway, Denmark, and other European countries.