Trelleborg, the focus of transport people
150 delegates representing ports, ship owners and the transport industry– were on Tuesday the 8th of November gathered in Trelleborg to participate in the eleventh Port Conference.
The theme this year was “The Four Corridors”. What they have in common is that they are based in Sweden's second largest port, Port of Trelleborg.
- Before we talked about customers today we are all joint partners, said Mr. Tommy Halén, CEO of the Port of Trelleborg, in his welcome speech and reminded that 18% of Swedish foreign trade passes through Trelleborg.
County Governor Mr. Göran Tunhammar gave an update on how extremely dependent Sweden is on trade with other countries.
- Fifty percent of the Swedish GDP consists of exports and 95 percent of exports are related to sea transports. Sweden is very dependent on sea transports, said the governor, and thereby pointing out the role of Skånes largest port in Trelleborg.
Mr. Jose Anselmo, responsible for the Trans-European Network and Investment Strategy in the EU, also declared the importance of shipping today and in the future.
Recently, the EU presented its plans for the infrastructure in Europe to develop and connect from patchwork to network. The plans range in 2050 but Brussels expects the results long before that. Port of Trelleborg is one of the ports identified as strategically important and therefore probably eligible for support from the European Union.
Some of the infrastructure strategy of TEN-T is called Motorways of the Sea. The Port of Trelleborg has a significant role in the southern Baltic Sea with traffic to three ports in Germany and one in Poland.
Among other things, Mr. José Anselmo argued that transportation is the circulation system of an economy.
The Four Corridors that goes through Trelleborg is the West Corridor to Travemünde, the Central Corridor to Rostock, King´s Corridor to Sassnitz and the East Corridor to Swinoujiscie.
The Travemünde traffic was established by SJ in the 1950s and in 1962 TT-Line started their traffic between the two Baltic ports.
The Rostock traffic began a few years after the Iron Curtain had fallen, while the King's Corridor has been in operation since 1909.
After the war, ferries sailed from Trelleborg to various ports in Poland, while the current traffic to Swinoujiscie started a few years ago and therefore established the Eastern Corridor.
Representatives of various groups in the four ports on the south side and Trelleborg discussed the present and futures as well as the advantages and disadvantages of four different panel discussions during the afternoon.
These discussions revealed, among other things, that ship owners and ports really don´t fear a possible land connection over/under the Fehmarn Belt.
- The present ferry traffic over the Fehmarn Belt totally unbeatable, according to TT-Line's managing director Mr. Hannes Conzen.
The drivers need their rest, there is a detour of driving through Denmark but with a fair pricing the ferries can still compete in the future.
- It is not around the Fehmarn Belt that the bottleneck will be, it's around Hamburg. Besides that, no traffic to Finland and/or Russia will go that way. The ports will continue to develop even in the future.
Mr. Tommy Halén ended the conference by talking about the environmental perspectives on transport corridors.
The Port of Trelleborg is one of the leading ports in the Baltic region in terms of environmentally friendly transport and works with Green Ships and Clean Ships.
Transport Corridors to the Continental Europe via Trelleborg
Panelmembers:
Regional perspective.pdf
The West Corridor.pdf
The Central Corridor.pdf
The Kings Corridor.pdf
The East Corridor.pdf
Presentations from the conference:
Presentation _Tommy Halen_The enviromental perspective.pdf
Presentation_ Jose_Anselmo_.pdf
The pictures from the annual Transport and Logsitics Conference 2011 held by the Port of Trelleborg.
Click on a picture to enlarge.
