News / News analysis: Gdansk vs Gdynia – Baltic Hub 3 a major offensive in a 15-year battle

Photo: Baltic Hub

This week’s inauguration of the new Baltic Hub 3 terminal at the Polish container hub of Gdansk could be seen as the final salvo in an intense a 15-year-plus battle for control over the country’s container supply chains.

However, it could also portend a new game of musical chairs among carriers serving the region searching available capacity, and terminals looking to lock-in volumes.

The new facility will increase Gdansk’s overall handling capacity by 50%, adding 1.5m teu annual capacity to the 3m which the port’s first and second phases created. Initial operations began last week, ramping up to full services expected in the final quarter of the year.

Gdynia and Gdansk, neighbouring ports on Poland’s Baltic coast, are barely 10km apart and have been locked in a bitter local competition for traffic and carriers since the first cargo ship arrived at the newly built DCT facility in Gdansk in 2007, the construction of which was largely financed by Australian investment firm Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets.

DCT Gdansk was built on the belief that bigger ships were coming to the Baltic, as growing volumes in the region – remember, this was only a few years after Poland’s EU accession which, along with a host of central and eastern European nations, was now the recipient of EU development funds – would sooner or later demand that carriers stopped transhipping Baltic cargo in Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg and, instead, introduced direct calls.

However, the infamously shallow Baltic Sea had no ports capable of handling the new generation of ultra-large container vessels that were then moving from design board to construction; the most obvious hub port candidate, Gdynia, hampered by the restrictions of its vessel turning basin.

Until 2009, Gdynia remained the larger of the two ports, but Gdansk took the lead at some point in 2010, and each year since has stretched that lead over its more established rival.

It is no coincidence that it was during 2010 that the first deepsea call at Gdansk took place, as The Loadstar reported at the time, after DCT lured Maersk from Gdynia and began handling the line’s 14,500 teu Emma-class vessels deployed on its AE10 Asia-Europe service.

After that, the fortunes of the two ports diverged, in terms of throughput.

Data source: eeSea. Graphic: The Loadstar

In this context it is clear that Gdansk was urgently in need of greater capacity, as its 2024 throughput of 2.25m teu represented a 75% utilisation rate – a level container terminal analysts consider as ‘fully utilised’.

But what sort of return on investment can the terminal’s owners – 40% held by Singapore’s PSA, with the Polish Development Fund and IFM Investors each holding a 30% stake – realistically expect?

According to the eeSea liner database, Gdansk has four deepsea services – the Ocean Alliance’s NEU1 and NEU5 Asia-Europe strings, MSC’s Britannia and Albatross Asia-Europe services – and 11 feeder strings.

Meanwhile, Gdynia also hosts 11 feeder services, and two deepsea calls – MSC’s Britannia and transatlantic Ecuador-NWC-USA services.

Gdynia’s turning basin was expanded in 2021 and only last month the ICTSI-operated Baltic Container Terminal opened a 400-metre expansion of its facilities. MSC signed up to begin calling at BCT in April, with the 16,000 teu MSC Rose making its inaugural call on 9 April.

Photo: ICTSI

The question increasingly being asked is what MSC’s future plans involve. The group is behind the largest shipping/port takeover deal ever – the Til/BlackRock purchase of Hutchison’s international port portfolio –  and there could still be avenues by which Gdynia could gain ground on its rival.

Crucially, one of the Hutchison facilities under the hammer is Gdynia Container Terminal and, should it join the MSC family, it could give the Geneva-headquartered carrier the opportunity to consolidate its position in Gdynia, possibly at the expense of its two calls at Gdansk – after all, the pro forma port rotation of MSC’s Britannia service currently lists calls at both Gdansk and Gdynia, and it is highly unusual for a deepsea Asia-Europe string to include stops at two ports so close together, and may indicate the carrier is testing Gdynia as an future alternative.

Should that transpire, the opportunities for Gdansk to replace MSC are limited. Maersk and Hapag, under the Gemini Cooperation, now service the region through the Euro Shuttle 3 service that currently runs Gdynia Container Terminal-Bremerhaven-Wilhelmshaven, deploying two vessels with an average capacity of 5,200 teu, and the strategy of calling only at self-controlled hub ports with mainline vessels probably precludes a return to Gdansk with such ships.

However, since April, the Euro Shuttle 3 service has been making inducement calls at Gdansk as well as calling at Gdynia and, adding to the intrigue, it was Maersk’s methanol-powered feeder ship Laura Maersk that is pictured above tied alongside the T3 berth as it commenced operations.

Meanwhile, the new capacity at Baltic Hub could persuade the Ocean Alliance carrier to increase its presence. Its two Asia-Europe calls feature the largest vessels coming to Gdansk, with Cosco-owned OOCL providing all 15 ships on the NEU1 service, some of which are 24,188 teu capacity.

Ocean Alliance partner CMA CGM runs four Baltic and Scandinavia feeders out of Gdansk, while Cosco and its intra-Europe subsidiary, Diamond Line, run two feeder services from there, indicating that the partners have opted to use Gdansk as a regional transhipment hub.

There may also be an opportunity for the Premier Alliance to beef up its Asia-North Europe offerings. Currently, member lines ONE, HMM and Yang Ming cooperate with MSC on four strings into North Europe, but the furthest east these go, in terms of direct calls, is the Swedish port of Gothenburg.

However, Premier lead carrier ONE already operates its PLS feeder service on a Rotterdam-Hamburg-Gdynia-Gdansk rotation, and should the congestion issues currently plaguing the German and Dutch hubs persist, it may be tempted to start thinking about strategic alternatives.