AARHUS: THE BALTIC HUB

CONTAINER PORT: The increasing traffic chaos on northern Europe’s motorways and the bottlenecks around Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Rotterdam can be relieved by using the large container ports at the entry to the Baltic Sea. To further improve its services, the Port of Aarhus has invested in major expansion and a new infrastructure.

These days billions are being invested to beat the traffic chaos developing around the main western European Atlantic sea ports in Rotterdam, Bremerhaven and Hamburg. Meanwhile, with four new Baltic Sea states as EU members and a large Russian market with St. Petersburg as a port of transit, Baltic traffic is expected to expand at a rapid rate in the coming years.

Denmark’s largest container port in Aarhus has long seen the writing on the wall. It is focusing on becoming the transit port that will relieve the increasing chaos on the motorways through Poland and Germany as well as the shipping traffic on the Kiel canal. At Aarhus, new quays have been built, with new container terminals and an expansion of the port’s facilities including cranes, access roads and storage yards. These initiatives are aimed at consolidating the port’s leading position as one of Europe’s most efficient and productive in terms of cargo volume handled.

Each year, approx. 8,000 ships dock at the Port of Aarhus carrying more than 11.3 million tons of cargo. About half of the total is handled via containers and the ferry routes of the port. About 2.1 million tons are oil products, and the rest is bulk cargo. The port’s largest customer is Maersk-Sealand, which operates its own container terminal. The shipping company A.P.Moller-Maersk calls at the port once a week with an ocean-going line to the Far East. The port has its own terminals for every purpose: Two container terminals, multi-terminal, bulk terminal, oil port, wood terminal and ferry terminal. In addition there is repair yard, fishing harbour, marina and wooden ship harbour. The port has 3 Post-Panamax container cranes, 5 Panamax container cranes, 2 bulk cranes, 9 quay cranes, 1 heavy-lift crane and 1 mobile crane. About 150 private sector companies, employing several thousand people, are located in the port including ship brokers, stevedore and warehouse businesses, control companies, container repair operatives as well as road transport operators and railway companies. The port covers a land area of 227 ha and a water area of 293 ha. The total quay length is 13.5 km. and the deepest water is 14 meters.

From road to ship
“To avoid complete chaos on Europe’s motorways, it is an absolute necessity to shift a lot more transport off the roads and onto ships,” says port director Bjarne Mathiesen of the Port of Aarhus. “That is not just my opinion. That is an EU objective and all traffic research points to the same conclusion. It naturally requires an infrastructure that works, and that is what the Port of Aarhus is busy developing – efficient access roads with a motorway directly to the port, new cranes which can handle the biggest container ships, lots of storage space and non-bureaucratic and flexible conditions for customers.”

Port director Bjarne Mathiesen

More ocean-going shipping lines
There are currently more than 5 million containers in circulation in the entire Baltic area, and the number is increasing rapidly. In the last year, the Port of Aarhus has increased its share by around 15%, with TEU’s accounting for almost half the increase. This has meant that for the first time in its history, the port has generated a turnover of more than 11 million tons of cargo.

“To be able to participate in relieving the northern European goods transport situation which is currently threatening to descend into total chaos, we need to attract more ocean-going shipping lines,” says Mathiesen. “That means more regular calls which will encourage a shift of the routes from the Baltic away from the roads and the bottlenecks in northern Germany. With the expansions and investments we are currently implementing, we are playing our part in creating the conditions for such a change in the transport pattern.”

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