After years of fast and sustained development, world’s container shipping trade recorded significant drops in 2009, including the total volume reduction by 10.3%, down to 123 mln TEU. Contrary to predictions of a safe haven, the Baltic container market turned out highly vulnerable to the economy slowdown.

Baltic Ports were heavily affected by smaller market demand and serious economic problems in the Baltic states (mainly Latvia and Estonia, where GDP fell by 18% and 13.7% respectively), negative trend in Russia (estimated -8.5% GDP in 2009), and the consequent decline in trade volumes. The reduction of import to Russia was extremely painful to the Port of St. Petersburg and its closest Russian cargo transit rivals, like the Finnish Kotka (-46,4%) and the Estonian Tallinn (-27,6%). As a result, the leading container ports in the Baltic reshuffled, with Gdynia re-entering the big three despite its own 38% drop in container handlings. In such market conditions the total 818,000 TEU in Goteborg (-5,2% cutback) should be perceived as the port’s success…

Gdańsk has kept its word. Not long after the second year of its operations, Deepwater Container Terminal hosted the first ever oceanic container vessel, with Maersk launching a historic direct service between Poland and the Far East.

On January 4th, the 8100 TEU Maersk Taikung first called at the terminal, discharging 400 containers and taking 250 in exchange. This has triggered a regular weekly service of container giants arriving at Gdańsk every Monday and stimulated opening of two new feeder connections – with St. Petersburg (operated by Maersk itself), and with Finland’s Kotka and Helsinki (operated by Unifeeder). The AE10 connection does not really shorten transit time on Gdańsk-Shanghai direction (35 days westbound and 41 days eastbound), but the clients will naturally benefit from the lack of extra transhipment at one of Europe’s main hubs…

Last November Unifeeder, northern Europe’s largest feeder operator, acquired Cyprus-based IMCL. By doing so, the company significantly extended its presence in the eastern part of the Baltic.

Crisis in transportation has not caused any feeder operator to disappear – except for the IMCL, although this company has not been the weakest one on the Baltic market. Now, despite difficulties, the market is still full of smaller and weaker companies, which may be perceived as contradictory to the basic laws of economy. The reason for this is the fact that IMCL was always a “stranger” – it has never belonged to any local cluster and its roots lay beyond northern Europe. It seems that the local market is destined for either local or global business. “In-between” solutions don’t work here…