Sea of UE Funds at the Port of Gdynia

The Port of Gdynia Authority S.A obtained a significant co-financing covering those important elements of the port development, i.e. “Deepening of the fairway and internal sea areas of the Port of Gdynia – stages 1 and 3 and the redevelopment of quays in the Port of Gdynia – stages 2 and 3”, contract no. POIS.03.02.00-00-0070/18-00.

Thanks to EU funds infrastructural investments result not only in economic growth of the country, but also – what is very important – create new workplaces in the region. One workplace at the port stimulates employment of four people in a port-related industry.

Moreover, according to data provided by Tax Authority, operations at the Port of Gdynia bring more than 6 billion PLN to the state budget every year. This income comes from duties and taxes on trading, carried out by specialist cargo handling terminals operating at the Port of Gdynia.

The aim of deepening access fairway and internal sea areas at the Port of Gdynia is to increase competitiveness of the port within the Baltic Sea area and in the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor of Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). Once completed, the ports navigational parameters will be improved and the competitiveness of the maritime transport will increase, being more environment-friendly at the same time.

The main objective of the project is to enable larger vessels to call at the Port of Gdynia, i.e. up to 400 meters long and 58 meters wide, of maximum draught -15 m (at present it is -13 m). Navigational conditions and the security of hydro-technical structures will improve, too.

The first stage of investment started in September 2017. The first element was reconstruction of turntable no. 2 and Pier no. 3, including dredging works. Also, floating dock of the Polish Naval Shipyard will be moved to a new position.

The main task was enlarging turntable no. 2 to much greater parameters – its diameter will grow from 400 meters to 480 meters.

To increase navigational security of vessels and to preserve appropriate width of the Channel, it is necessary to widen the Pilot Entrance to 140 meters at the bottom and to reconstruct the Northern Spur in the Naval Port and the port Quay with breakwater. Simultaneously, Maritime Authority in Gdynia will perform works on the access fairway.

“I am very happy that EU funds let us modify the infrastructure of the Port of Gdynia to keep us competitive on the port services market,” underlines Adam Meller, President of the Port of Gdynia Authority S.A. “The investment will enable container ships running on direct ocean connections with the Far East and other continents call at the Port of Gdynia.”

“Deepening of the access fairway and inner port areas is directly linked to the reconstruction of the internal port entrance. At the same time these investments require carrying out other works related to securing port quays, namely Norweskie, Słowackie, and Włoskie,” adds Grzegorz Dyrmo, Vice President of the Port of Gdynia Authority S.A. “The scope of necessary works to be performed at the stage of main hydrotechnical investment task is vast, and I have in mind here the deepening of access fairway and inner port areas – stages II and III. Some quays will be built anew – this will be observed especially when reconstructing Helskie Quay. It must be remembered that the Port will continue handling inbound vessels, which means an additional challenge related to coordination of construction works and ship traffic.”

The estimated total cost of the project, i.e. the deepening of access fairway and inner port areas with reconstruction of quays is 556,940,377.83 PLN gross, with the EU co-financing in the amount of 273,000,000 PLN.

On 3 July this year, during a meeting at the seat of the Port of Gdynia Authority S.A., a contract was signed with Wuprohyd Sp. z o.o. on developing a construction plan and detail design for reconstruction of inner port areas of the Port of Gdynia. Wuprohyd has 40 weeks to complete this task and is to obtain the final building permit and to exercise design supervision during construction works.