POLAND: The Baltic Hub Container Terminal in the port of Gdańsk expects its capacity to grow to 8 million TEU per year by the mid-2030s, and it is aiming for rail to have a 36-39% share of hinterland movements by the middle of the next decade.
This was the forecast set out by Bartłomiej Felczyński, Business Development Manager for the Baltic Hub, on a guided tour to the terminal on April 8, offered as part of the RailFreight Summit taking place in the city.
With three active terminals already in use in the Baltic Hub, T5 is currently under construction, and the reception of the necessary permits for operation of terminal area T4 is now getting under way.
The intermodal facility was renamed from DCT Gdańsk in 2022 as part of efforts to show that its significance is increasing from a local to a regional hub. The Baltic Hub aims to become one of the largest such sites in Europe by the mid-2030s.
It handled a total of 2·2 million TEUs last year, including 8 400 freight trains. It aims to handle 11 000 trains next year, Felczyński says. Rail’s modal share in the terminal is 33% currently, with the largest operators serving the port complex being Metrans and ÖBB Rail Cargo Group.
Most of the maritime traffic arriving in the Gdańsk terminal is coming from China and southeast Asian countries. Approximately 70% of the terminal’s traffic is directed to the domestic market, while Ukraine, the Czech Republic and other central and eastern European countries are the main international onward transport destinations.
Asked about the reasons behind the growth of the terminal’s rail traffic, Felczyński said that the key drive is the growth of the Polish market. He also highlighted the ongoing decline of German rail infrastructure quality, which is leading customers in CEE countries to consider routing traffic through Poland instead. ‘We also don’t have congestion, nor infrastructure problems or personnel shortage like other competitor terminals in Europe’, he insisted.
