RLL Container Report - 30 November 2016
From: John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd. Email: john.keir@telia.com Date: 30 November 2016
The next stage of containerisation?
On the 24th of October, DCT Gdansk opened its second deepwater berth. This is the largest private investment in Poland’s port sector and it confirms Gdansk as the key container port in the Baltic region. The new berth is 650 metres long and is equipped with five STS cranes capable of handling container vessels with a capacity of over 20,000 teu. At the same time, Poland's railway infrastructure manager, PKP PLK commissioned the second line on the rail bridge linking Gdansk's Outer Port. The new connection can accommodate 180 fully-laden trains per day, linking up all the major population and industrial centres in Poland and Central Europe. These improvements will double the port’s box throughput to 3 million teu per annum. More importantly, Gdansk is one of the few ice-free container ports in the Baltic Region, which is a key factor in the development of the container traffic.
Large volumes of fertilisers are handled at almost all Baltic ports from Poland up to the Leningrad Region. Although considered a typical bulk cargo, fertiliser producers are moving away from the bulk approach towards a more container-friendly approach to export shipments. PhosAgro and EuroChem already load their fertilisers into bags directly at its factories in Russia. The bags vary in size from the large one ton to the smaller polyurethane bags, which one finds in the garden shops. The bags are loaded into open wagons lined with heavy-duty plastic wrapping and are then despatched to the ports. Here, most of the bags are opened and the fertiliser is loaded into bulk vessels in the conventional manner. Increasingly, however, fertilisers and other bagged products are being loaded into containers, including reefers, for the long journey to the field or to the fruit plantation.
Lest one thinks that this type of intermodal approach can only cater for a small percentage of fertiliser exports, consider the following. Gdansk now has a theoretical throughput of 3 million teu, half of which are export-bound. Of the 1.5 million outbound units, roughly half are empty meaning a potential 750,000 teu slots. As most of the boxes are forty-footers, the actual number of containers the figure is re-adjusted to 375,000 x 40’. Included in this figure are reefers, as they can also be lined and used as boxes. Assume that many of the available units cannot be used for one reason or another and adjust the figure to 200,000 x 40’. Then, multiply that by 25 tons per 40’ container and we arrive at a figure of 5 million tons of fertiliser per annum via the new terminal at Gdansk. However, the additional weight may too great, so halve it to 2.5 million tons.
The figures may be wrong, the thinking is certainly over-simplified but whichever way you calculate it, there is still a great number of bulk cargoes that can be containerised and which can generate much-needed additional revenue for hard-pressed deepsea lines.
John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd.
30 November 2016
Copyright ©, 2016, John Keir