Baltic Container Terminal (BCT), International Container Terminal Services, Inc.’s (ICTSI) container terminal in the Port of Gdynia, Poland, recently received two new quay cranes (QC), further boosting BCT’s status as a key port in Eastern Europe and in the Baltic region.

Measuring more than 60 meters high with a reach of more than 50 feet over the water, BCT’s new QCs have a capacity of more than 60 tons. They arrived in Gdynia on 7 December aboard the vessel Zhen Hua 8. “It is certainly a very important date in the history of the BCT. Not only will the new cranes replace the old ones damaged two years ago, they will also increase our vessel handling capacity significantly. It is another step towards serving large ocean ships in Gdynia,” says Krzysztof Szymborski, CEO of the Baltic Container Terminal. The QCs are part of a PLN 200 million (USD 58 million) investment program, which was initiated back in 2012. Co-funded by the European Union and the Infrastructure and Environment Operational Program, the investment covers the purchase of reloading equipment including railway gantry cranes, straddle carriers and container trailers. It also involved the surface replacement of storage yards and the rollout of specialized terminal IT systems. The cranes were supplied and manufactured by Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. Each crane can service 19-bay wide container vessels, which in practice are ships with 13,000 TEU capacities. Meanwhile, retrofitting of the BCT railway terminal has also been carried out in coordination with the Management Board of the Gdynia Port Authority. The expansion will facilitate the simultaneous servicing of full length trainloads. The investment program will increase BCT’s overall capacity by 50 percent. ICTSI is an international operator of common-user container terminals serving the global container shipping industry. ICTSI is the largest port operator in the Philippines and has a portfolio of 29 container terminal operations in 21 countries across six continents.