Sutcliffe's new blood flows to Gdańsk
With management and finance from a foreign private investor, the project looks set to answer the complaint that Poland's infrastructure has been too backward to attract the kind of foreign capital that our smaller Central European neighbors are used to.
On January 6, DCT Gdańsk plc, the UK company selected by the Port of Gdańsk Authority to construct and operate the new deep-water container terminal, received approval from the Treasury Ministry, signaling that Phase One, a zł.735 million (€157 million) investment, is about to begin.
Speaking from England, the leader of the DCT Gdańsk management team and chairman of shipping company John Sutcliffe & Son, James Sutcliffe, is upbeat. "We have pressed all the 'buttons' as a lot of work has been going on in the background. We will be appointing designers and surveyors in the next month or so. The design process should be complete within six to seven months with all final local 'permissions' in place."
For the local economy, the construction project will create two hundred jobs, while the permanent staff of the facility, likely to be recruited next year, will number 370.
Big name construction companies have already tendered and contracts will be awarded by the end of the summer to start construction in the Autumn. The terminal is scheduled to be operational twenty months from the start of construction. In a flurry of business-to-business lobbying by DCT, this window will see a concerted effort by Sutcliffe and his peers to push Gdańsk and Poland to worldwide shipping lines, "...who have already indicated their support."
The rationale behind the project goes further than the often-repeated arguments that Poland is an emerging market joining the EU, that its costs are low and that its skill base is high. There is a stick to the shippers' carrot, which is that the leading ports of continental Europe, Rotterdam and Hamburg, are congested and expensive, as are the communication lines from these break-of-bulk points across Germany to Central Europe.
"The EU is pressing very hard for Short Sea Shipping and has endorsed the DCT Gdańsk Project," says Sutcliffe. "We expect to have an edge as Gdańsk is ice free all year compared to St Petersburg (etc.)" DCT, with European backing, will this year be analyzing how it can offer rail distribution to and from the Black Sea ports of Odessa and Ilychevska, as well as vessel services extending to the whole of Northern Europe and the Baltic. "The Baltic has more growth potential than any other region in Northern Europe," says Sutcliffe, and "...rail is a vital factor for the efficient distribution of containers over two hundred kilometers. We will be in discussion with rail companies over the next twelve months."
DCT Gdańsk plans to be a vital part of the changes that Poland will go through during the next few years. "Poland is building more shopping centers than just about anywhere else in Europe at the moment," says Sutcliffe, a fact that will "drive up container volumes" as consumption and imports increase and West European supply norms, where the container is the unit of distribution, come into play. Likewise, in the event of a Polish liquefied gas export boom - which some analysts observing gas prospecting in Western Poland anticipate - the DCT Gdańsk terminal will be equipped to handle fuel containers. A larger freight and business park will be attached to the terminal to build what Sutcliffe calls "critical mass" that will support the terminal's operations.
"By the end of the month, our design team will be ready," says Terry Rogers, of DCT Gdańsk's project managers Day & Johnson, the man at the front line. "Then through the spring we will bottom out the surveying and the feasibility studies to run up to the start of construction." Rogers is confident that the project is not going to be tripped up by red tape with "...great support from local and national government. I'm surprised at how smoothly things are running, which bodes well for our plans for the rest of the year."
On January 6, DCT Gdańsk plc, the UK company selected by the Port of Gdańsk Authority to construct and operate the new deep-water container terminal, received approval from the Treasury Ministry, signaling that Phase One, a zł.735 million (€157 million) investment, is about to begin.
Speaking from England, the leader of the DCT Gdańsk management team and chairman of shipping company John Sutcliffe & Son, James Sutcliffe, is upbeat. "We have pressed all the 'buttons' as a lot of work has been going on in the background. We will be appointing designers and surveyors in the next month or so. The design process should be complete within six to seven months with all final local 'permissions' in place."
For the local economy, the construction project will create two hundred jobs, while the permanent staff of the facility, likely to be recruited next year, will number 370.
Big name construction companies have already tendered and contracts will be awarded by the end of the summer to start construction in the Autumn. The terminal is scheduled to be operational twenty months from the start of construction. In a flurry of business-to-business lobbying by DCT, this window will see a concerted effort by Sutcliffe and his peers to push Gdańsk and Poland to worldwide shipping lines, "...who have already indicated their support."
The rationale behind the project goes further than the often-repeated arguments that Poland is an emerging market joining the EU, that its costs are low and that its skill base is high. There is a stick to the shippers' carrot, which is that the leading ports of continental Europe, Rotterdam and Hamburg, are congested and expensive, as are the communication lines from these break-of-bulk points across Germany to Central Europe.
"The EU is pressing very hard for Short Sea Shipping and has endorsed the DCT Gdańsk Project," says Sutcliffe. "We expect to have an edge as Gdańsk is ice free all year compared to St Petersburg (etc.)" DCT, with European backing, will this year be analyzing how it can offer rail distribution to and from the Black Sea ports of Odessa and Ilychevska, as well as vessel services extending to the whole of Northern Europe and the Baltic. "The Baltic has more growth potential than any other region in Northern Europe," says Sutcliffe, and "...rail is a vital factor for the efficient distribution of containers over two hundred kilometers. We will be in discussion with rail companies over the next twelve months."
DCT Gdańsk plans to be a vital part of the changes that Poland will go through during the next few years. "Poland is building more shopping centers than just about anywhere else in Europe at the moment," says Sutcliffe, a fact that will "drive up container volumes" as consumption and imports increase and West European supply norms, where the container is the unit of distribution, come into play. Likewise, in the event of a Polish liquefied gas export boom - which some analysts observing gas prospecting in Western Poland anticipate - the DCT Gdańsk terminal will be equipped to handle fuel containers. A larger freight and business park will be attached to the terminal to build what Sutcliffe calls "critical mass" that will support the terminal's operations.
"By the end of the month, our design team will be ready," says Terry Rogers, of DCT Gdańsk's project managers Day & Johnson, the man at the front line. "Then through the spring we will bottom out the surveying and the feasibility studies to run up to the start of construction." Rogers is confident that the project is not going to be tripped up by red tape with "...great support from local and national government. I'm surprised at how smoothly things are running, which bodes well for our plans for the rest of the year."
