Untitled - Ministerstwo Rozwoju Regionalnego

Liner shipping and tramp shipping in the Baltic Sea is dominated by ships
of gross tonnage below 10 thousand GT. The operating oil tanker fleet, due to
draught restriction of 15.4 m, allow only for Aframax tankers of approximately
110 thousand DWT. Fully laden VLCC and ULCC tankers cannot enter the Baltic
Sea.
The container fleet of BSR countries constitutes ca. 13% of the world fleet in
terms of DWT, the tanker fleet 6.4% and general cargo fleet 11%.
Container shipping in the BSR can be assessed in three basic areas:
– deep sea shipping serviced by big container operators calling central BSR
ports;
– feeder shipping cooperating with big container operators,
– short sea shipping between Central European ports under dedicated
feeder services run by deep sea operators such as Maersk or MSC, or commercial
feeder services offered by such operators as Team Lines and BCL.
Container shipments in the BSR and related container fleet structure remains
in line with the major world trends. In the BSR, 134 container ships were
operated in 2006 totalling 88.4 thousand TEU, ca. 660 TEU on average.
With the beginning of 2007, 18 operators provided services in the BSR,
above all Unifeeder and Team Lines. They operate 62 container ships and their
market share amounts to 46%. The second group comprises carriers cooperating
with global container service providers, i.e. CMA, CGM, OOCL. The third group
includes local carriers operating on short routes. These are BCL, IMCL.
More and more often BSR hosts container ships of bigger loading capacity.
In March 2007, the Baltic Container Terminal in Gdynia handled a 4174 TEU
container vessel and in April a 5029 TEU container ship. The container fleet in
the next 10-15 years is expected to feature bigger vessels. Introduction of bigger
container ships is restricted by port facilities, i.e. the depth of port basins as well
as equipment and wharf length. In this situation 480-1000 TEU feeder vessels
are assigned a crucial role in delivering containers to BSR ports handling big
container vessels.
The structure of feeder vessels, until recently, was dominated by charter vessels
on the market providing operational flexibility. With time, due to the fluctuating
rates on the charter market, feeder operators are investing in tonnage,
gradually replacing charter tonnage with own tonnage.
The shipment of dry cargo in the BSR is covered by multipurpose, general
cargo, reefer ships. They are generally 2600 DWT ships which can call at most
ports in the region.
On Baltic and on many North European lines, traditional passenger car ferries
are replaced by ro-pax ships adapted to mainly to the carriage of trailers,
roll on and roll off cargo and passengers. The Italian shipyard Fincantieri is
building a series of four, the biggest to date, ro-pax vessels of gross tonnage
42500 with 500 passenger berths. They will be operated on the Helsinki-
Travemûnde line by the Finnlines.
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