DCT GDAŃSK – HISTORY, DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATION OF THE LARGEST AND MOST MODERN MARITIME CONTAINER TERMINAL IN POLAND

The idea of creating a deep-sea container terminal in Gdańsk was developed in the late 1990s and was associated with the growing potential of deep-sea trade routes of the Baltic Sea. In the second half of 2000, the Port of Gdańsk Authority SA announced a tender which was won by the British consortium of James Sutcliffe. Negotiations with the investor were completed in May 2002, and a preliminary agreement was signed in the autumn of 2003. The final notarial lease agreement was not concluded until 27 January 2004.1 To implement the project, a new company was created – Deepwater Container Terminal Gdańsk SA. Its main tasks included designing, constructing and operating a deep-water container terminal in Gdańsk, which was to become the largest facility of this type in the Baltic. The premises of the so-called Northern Port (approx. 30 ha) were leased to the British investor for 30 years (with the option of extension for another 30 years).2


THE ORIGINS OF DCT GDAŃSK
The idea of creating a deep-sea container terminal in Gdańsk was developed in the late 1990s and was associated with the growing potential of deep-sea trade routes of the Baltic Sea. In the second half of 2000, the Port of Gdańsk Authority SA announced a tender which was won by the British consortium of James Sutcliffe. Negotiations with the investor were completed in May 2002, and a preliminary agreement was signed in the autumn of 2003. The final notarial lease agreement was not concluded until 27 January 2004. 1 To implement the project, a new company was created -Deepwater Container Terminal Gdańsk SA. Its main tasks included designing, constructing and operating a deep-water container terminal in Gdańsk, which was to become the largest facility of this type in the Baltic. The premises of the so-called Northern Port (approx. 30 ha) were leased to the British investor for 30 years (with the option of extension for another 30 years). 2 The construction of the terminal began on 25 October 2005 and was completed at the beginning of 2007. The cost of the first stage of construction was estimated at EUR 150 million. During the implementation of the project, an Australian investor was secured, as a result of which the GIF II fund (Macquarie Group) took over shares from the British consortium and acquired 99.99% of DCT Gdańsk SA shares. 3 As a result of the works, the complete infrastructure of the deep-water container terminal was built, along with an access road with a road junction and a manoeuvring yard for cars, its own double-track rail siding, a fully equipped transshipment berth and a ramp for Ro-Ro loading/unloading of ships, as well as an administrative building and a warehouse. At the beginning, it was planned that the terminal's annual handling capacity would amount to 500,000 TEU, 4 and the target capacity -1,000,000 TEU. However, as soon as at the end of 2013, this capacity amounted to 1,250,000 TEU, and five years later -3,000,000 TEU (see Table 1). of 2010, acquiring the Danish shipping company Maersk Line as its new customer and becoming the only Polish deep-water terminal handling container vessels with a capacity of 8,000 TEU. 5 Moreover, according to data from Ocean Shipping Consultants Ltd., transporting a container from Shanghai via Gdańsk to Warsaw in the discussed period cost approx. 28% less than via Rotterdam and approx. 20% less than via Hamburg. Since Gdańsk is located closer to the eastern markets than both of these European ports, DCT also provided savings of over 10% on shipping lines to other Baltic ports in comparison to Rotterdam, while in relation to Hamburg, these savings amounted to even 15%. 6 The option of a direct connection to Asia significantly contributed to the development of DCT. When in the following years the terminal began handling E-class container ships with a capacity of 15,500 TEU belonging to Maersk Line (2011), Triple-E vessels 7 with over 18,000 20-foot containers on board (2013), and ships of the MSC company (2016 8 ), the Gdańsk company joined the prestigious group of deep-water container ports in Northern Europe which handle the largest vessels in the world on a weekly basis.
In turn in 2012, as part of an agreement between the global operator Maersk Line with Procont sp. z o. o. and Schavemaker Cargo sp. z o. o., dedicated rail connections were opened, operated by "Maersk Amber Express", from the DCT container port terminal to Kąty Wrocławskie, and as part of the agreement between CTL Logistics sp. z o. o. and Euroterminal Sławków, a similar connection was opened, operated by "Maersk 5 With the arrival of Maersk Taikung in Gdańsk on 4 January 2010, the first direct weekly service to Asia was launched. From that moment, container handling in Gdańsk began to increase rapidly. Baltic Express", from DCT to the terminal in Sławków. 9 In addition, in October of the same year, the international company Goodman began the construction of Pomorskie Centrum Logistyczne (PCL, Pomeranian Logistics Centre) 10 on a 110 ha plot of land located at the back of DCT with a total area of buildings of 53,000 m 2 . On 21 May 2014, DCT opened an extended rail siding, increasing its annual handling capacity to 700,000 TEU. The total value of the project was over PLN 10 million, and 4 million of that was provided by co-financing from the European Union (EU). The extension of the siding included adding two new tracks with a length of 621 m each, constructing a storage yard along the siding and constructing three railway crossings. In the second half of 2014, key decisions were also made regarding the creation of the second deep-water berth in Gdańsk -the T2 terminal. Its construction began in May 2015 and was completed in October 2016. The 650-metre long T2 berth was equipped with five modern STS cranes, the largest in the Baltic Sea, enabling the handling of ships with a capacity of over 22,000 TEU, thanks to which DCT Gdańsk's annual handling potential doubled from 1.5 to 3 million TEU. The first ship moored on T2 on 7 October 2016, but the official opening of the berth took place later -on 24 October. The construction of the T2 berth was completed in accordance with the schedule and within the planned budget. The funds for the project came from the company's own resources, as well as loans granted by a consortium of Polish and foreign banks with the active participation of DCT Gdańsk SA shareholders. 11 In the meantime, in August 2016, the Gdańsk terminal initiated cooperation with Alliance G6. 12 In turn, after the opening of the T2 berth, in 2017, DCT began cooperation with the newly created OCEAN Alliance, 13 gaining another direct connection from the Far East with the use of vessels with a capacity of up to 21.5 thousand TEU. 14 In June 2017, 15 a warehouse with a total area of 36.7 thousand m 2 was opened in the Pomeranian Logistics Centre. After the construction of the new building was completed, the total area of the Centre amounted to over 88,000 m 2 . At the same time, Goodman company finished formal preparations for the construction of a third warehouse with an area of 36,000 m 2 at PLC.
In 2018, DCT Gdańsk planned a new investment programme amounting to PLN 280 million. The T2B project assumes e.g. retrofitting the T2 berth with two additional STS cranes and five electric RTG cranes. There are also plans to enlarge storage yards and introduce complete automation of the gate complex for lorries that arrive in accordance with previous booking in the e-Brama appointment system. Investments in rail connections are another important development point. The existing railway tracks will be extended to 750 m, and then the rail siding will be extended from four to six tracks. The modernisation of the siding also envisages the purchase of fully electrified Automated Rail Mounted Gantry (ARMG) cranes as well as launching an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) camera system for registering trains and containers. Thanks to planned investments, the terminal's rail capacity will be increased by half. 16 What is significant, at the end of 2018, the current owner of DCT, the above-mentioned Macquarie fund, decided to sell the majority stake in the company. 17 At present, it is not yet known exactly what the further development and investment plans for the Gdańsk hub will be. From the start of its operations until 2012, the Gdańsk terminal transshipped 2 million TEU. In 2013, the volume of transshipments amounted to over 1.15 million TEU, which secured DCT's position as the largest Baltic container terminal in this respect. In turn, the only drop in transshipments so far was recorded in 2015, with the volume of container handling amounting to 1,069,705 TEU in total. During this period, however, drops were recorded in all European Union ports. They were caused, among others, by developing eastern ports taking over transit cargo, including Russian ports located on the Baltic Sea; by limiting the import of goods from the Far East; or by the Russian-Ukrainian war, retaliatory sanctions imposed by the European Union on the Russian Federation, and the Russian embargo on EU goods. 18 However, as soon as 2016, DCT's transshipments increased again, amounting to almost 1.3 million TEU. In 2017, the Gdańsk terminal handled almost 1.6 million 20-foot containers, thanks to which it was included among the top hundred largest container ports in the world according to the Lloyds List ranking (see Chart 1).
Due to the dynamic development of the DCT terminal, the importance of the entire Port of Gdańsk in Poland, the European Union and the world has changed in recent years. It is currently the most important and modern port in our country.  container ports. Four years later, in 2012, it was already among the 20 largest container ports in Europe (19 th place), and since 2016 it has consistently occupied the 16 th position. It should be expected that the investments planned for the coming years will cause the Gdańsk port to become one of the top 15 or even top 10 of European container ports. 19 What is more, in 2010, i.e. in the first year since the launch of the ocean service at DCT, the Port of Gdańsk was ranked fourth among the largest container ports of the Baltic Sea. On the other hand, since 2012, it has been an unchanging runner-up in the ranking, although at the current pace of development it should be expected that it will soon overtake the current leader, St. Petersburg (see Table 2). Finally, in 2017, the Port of Gdańsk was included in the prestigious list of the 100 best container ports in the world prepared by the Container Management magazine as the only Polish sea transport hub. 20

OPERATIONAL ACTIVITIES OF GDAŃSK DCT
The container terminal is a complex logistics system in which decisions are made in three problem areas (see Figure 1). The specificity of the terminal is determined by planners already at the first stage of its construction, i.e. when designing the terminal; in this case both economic factors and technical aspects are taken into account. Most European maritime container terminals are multimodal systems, equipped with their own rail sidings and convenient connections with land transport. At the first stage of the terminal construction, special attention is paid to spatial planning (location of the berth, storage yard, warehouse, rail siding, etc.), the decisions about purchasing appropriate equipment (STS, RTG and ARMG cranes, IMVs -Internal Moving Vehicles, etc.), the planned capacity of the berth, which in the future will affect the amount and size of ships handled at the terminal, and the choice of TOS (Terminal Operating System), affecting the overall efficiency of the entire system.
Operational planning includes making decisions with a short time horizon, usually not exceeding a month. Operational planning includes, in particular, the allocation of berths to ships, the allocation of quay and yard gantry cranes for loading/unloading ships, designation of storage areas for unloaded containers (e.g. division into export, import, refrigerated containers, dangerous cargo) and preparation of bay plans. 21 However, taking into account the current operation of container terminals, it should be remembered that the so-called real-time planning is most significant here. Random incidents and unforeseen events (such as delays in a ship entering the port, failure of the handling equipment or parts of the system) mean that current operations can be planned within a time horizon of a maximum of 10-15 minutes, and key decisions are usually made in a split second. The actual management of the terminal consists primarily of such activities as the assignment of transport orders to vehicles, planning of container transport routes in the storage yard, allocation of storage spaces for unloaded multimodal containers, or allocation of quay and yard gantry cranes for the ongoing tasks.
In the area of seaports, as part of the port services sector, complex and diverse economic activities are carried out. Adapting the activities of port terminals to changing market conditions is associated with the need to create packages of logistics services for cargo (commercial and distribution, handling, transport and loading services), ships (industrial, supply, repair and renovation, towing and mooring services and other auxiliary services) and ship crews (social, health, hotel and information services). 22 However, the essence of the operation of any maritime container terminal is primarily the management of cargo flow, ensuring the movement of containers to the appropriate locations in the yard, and optimisation of the use of the existing means of transport. Modern port handling and storage bases also strive to achieve the highest efficiency, which is conditioned, among others, by: -the time of unloading and loading the ship with quay gantry cranes, -the efficiency of devices transporting containers to the side of the ship, -efficiency in handling road and rail transport, -the cost of energy consumption per 1 TEU, -the efficiency of human work. 23 Typical port container terminals include quays, handling and storage yards, gates and areas for road vehicles, a rail loading station, a receiving and distribution warehouse, a dispatch and control centre, a washing and cleaning container station and a repair workshop. 24 Quays are used for mooring and servicing ships from land. Containers are stored in piles in storage yards divided into sectors for containers with neutral cargo, refrigerated containers and containers with dangerous goods. Containers transported by road are received and issued through a gate, which is connected by an internal road system to the quay, storage yard and railway station consisting of a certain number of tracks and a weight for weighing container wagons. Indoor warehouses are used to store any general cargo in situations when these goods are to be containerised only at the terminal. In turn, the dispatch centre is the headquarters of the services responsible for terminal management and of enterprises cooperating with the base in the field of container handling. 25 The basic types of operations taking place at container maritime terminals are presented in Figure 2. The functioning of maritime container terminals is similar worldwide. In the present article, it will be discussed as exemplified by the DCT terminal in Gdańsk that is of interest to us. During transshipment, containers are first unloaded from the ship by STS cranes equipped with one winch, which moves the container directly to vehicles waiting on the berth. Subsequently, the container is transferred to an IMV tractor, which transports it via the shortest route to the storage yard.  DCT operational vehicles (tractors with semi-trailers, gantry cranes, carts, forklifts, etc.) move around the terminal along specially designated routes, while in the port area these vehicles always have the right of way over external vehicles (e.g. lorries). 26 The area of the storage yard is divided into sectors (rows) served by RTG cranes. The cargo delivered by a tractor with a container semitrailer is taken over by one of them and transported to the place selected after prior notification by the Terminal Operating System. In the meantime, at the other end of the yard, the containers that are to be transported by land are loaded onto terminal vehicles in order to be brought to the rail loading point in the terminal. Thanks to this, placing containers in the storage yard is a continuous process in which both terminal vehicles moving from the direction of the sea and those working from land do not need to wait unnecessarily for gantry cranes working in the yard. The stages of container handling at the terminal described above are shown in Figure 3. There are currently 11 STS cranes operating at the Gdańsk terminal, 35 RTG cranes, 4 lifts for full containers, 6 stackers for empty containers, 71 IMVs, 82 container trailers, 17 forklifts. The terminal has 1,072 connections for refrigerated containers. The DCT also has a rail siding with four tracks with a total length of 2.5 km and a warehouse with an area of 8,200 m 2 . The terminal's operational area is 71 ha, while the storage area alone measured in TEU is 55,000. 27

CONCLUSION
The purpose of the article was to present the history and functioning of the sea container terminal that is the most modern and largest in Poland in terms of the annual handling of 20-foot containers, which is currently DCT Gdańsk. As a result of a descriptive analysis of Eurostat data and information from the DCT Gdańsk website as well as in industry reports by Lloyds List, Port Monitor or Container Management, it was concluded that in the near future the Port of Gdańsk (including DCT) will strengthen its competitive position on both European and global container shipping markets.
Thanks to the DCT terminal established in 2007, the Port of Gdańsk is the second largest Baltic container port and the 16 th container port in the EU. Last year, the Gdańsk port was also included on the prestigious list of the 100 best container ports in the world prepared by the Container Management magazine. After twelve years of activity, DCT is still developing. In October 2016, T2 berth was opened at the terminal, enabling the handling of vessels with a capacity of over 22,000 TEU, thanks to which DCT Gdańsk's annual transshipment potential doubled from 1.5 to 3 million TEU, and the terminal gained another direct connection from the Far East. For the coming years, the management board of DCT Gdańsk has planned further investment projects, under which T2 berth is to be equipped with additional STS and RTG cranes, and the existing railway siding will be expanded to six tracks. For this reason, it should be assumed that in a few years the Gdańsk terminal will significantly strengthen its competitive position on both the European and global market of container shipping. Deepwater Container Terminal Gdańsk (DCT Gdańsk) is located in the southern part of the Baltic Sea in the Gulf of Gdańsk and is an important element of the trans-European Baltic-Adriatic transport corridor. It is the only deep-water terminal (up to 17 m) in the Baltic Sea Region having direct ocean vessel calls from the Far East. The terminal handles Polish import and export, transshipment and transit. Its high competitive position in Central and Eastern Europe is due primarily to its easy nautical accessibility and year-round ice-free access (location at the estuary) combined with operational excellence. The article presents the origins, development and operational activity of the Gdańsk terminal. In the analytical part of the text, information provided by DCT Gdańsk, Eurostat data as well as industry reports by Lloyds List, Port Monitor or Container Management were used. Thanks to the results of the analysis one may conclude that the Port of Gdańsk (DCT included) will strengthen its competitive position both on the European and global market of container shipping in the near future.