The investor, Poland’slargest container terminal, has officially started the construction phase of a new deepwater quay in Gdansk’s Northern Port. On Thursday, 22 January 2015 DCT Gdansk has handed over the construction site to the Belgian N.V. BESIX – the general contractor and the designer of the new facility.
“DCT Gdansk’s team, our shareholders, clients and the people supporting us in this project, had been waiting for this moment for over two years. Getting to this stage was not easy, but today we can be proud that this major step for the Polish container industry has been made. Poland and the whole Baltic area have gained a new quality in deep-sea services with a multi-user container terminal capable to serve the world’s largest container vessels” said Maciek Kwiatkowski, DCT Chief Executive Officer.
The construction works will last 19 months. These include both site preparation and building the facility. The preparation of the building site should take approximately six weeks. After this, the construction works will begin.
DCT Gdansk received its first vessel in June 2007. Since January 2010, DCT Gdansk started receiving on a weekly basis 8.000 TEU container vessels departing from the Far East. This direct connectivity with Asia boosted DCT Gdansk’s development as it became the Baltic Sea hub, achieving 180% growth in 2010 and made DCT one of the fastest growing terminals in the world. The new era for DCT opened in May 2011, when the facility started handling the Maersk Line’s E-type class container vessels with the capacity of 15.500 TEU, the world’s largest ships at that time. In 2012, the container terminal handled its second millionth TEU since the operations kick-off, and closed the year with yet another annual volume record of approximately 900.000 TEU. In August 2013 DCT Gdansk serviced first Triple E class vessel, Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, in its maiden voyage. In 2013 the container terminal handled more than 1 150 000 TEU.
This record has permanently put DCT on the map of the world’s major container terminals and ensured its position as the biggest container terminal in terms of volume in the Baltic area.