On July 1, a management team from the German firm BLG Container GMBH & Co., took the reins at the Klapeida Stevedoring Company, also known as KLASCO, and its container and ferry terminal.
The first order of business, says new General Director Hartmut Mangels, is, well, more business.
"We need some more cargo here," he told TBT. "There's a lot of space here and it's a modern terminal, the first thing we have to do is get cargo to Klapeida."
The German firm will manage the operation of the container terminal and the ferry port, train personnel, install the operations equipment, integrate the terminals into international cargo corridors, and handle the marketing. The team will stay for three years, then BLG will decide whether to buy shares in KLASCO.
Mangels, a former merchant marine who worked for 22 years as the manager of operations for the container terminal in Bremerhaven, thinks it is possible to get Klapeida's terminal up to the level of 150,000 teus (20-foot unit containers) per year. Now, he reports, it is operating at the rate of roughly 45,000 teus a year.
The terminal in Bremerhaven does 1.8 million teus per year and employs 1,200 workers. Mangels reports. It has a share agreement with the EuroK terminal in Hamburg, which he maintains will create virtually the biggest shipping entity in Europe.
Klapeida should be able to benefit, he adds. "But I think it's not possible to do this in 14 days. We need a little bit longer," he said, jokingly. "My colleagues in Hamburg and Bremerhaven will help me with their connections."
Also good for Klapeida will be the learning opportunities. "I will bring people from Bremerhaven and Hamburg here to Klapeida," said Mangels. "We will also send people from Klapeida to Bremerhaven and Hamburg to teach them about all kinds of technology and operations, and marketing."
Klapeida is the second largest dry cargo port in the Baltic region, after St. Petersburg. Ventspils, the largest port in the Baltic States, specializes in liquid cargo. Up till now probably the port's biggest selling point is the fact that it is ice-free - the only such port in the Baltic States.
"Klapeida is the most northern ice-free port in the Baltic Sea," said Valdas Lukauskas, a marketing representative for the Klapeida State Seaport Authority. "It is a geographically favorable location in comparison to other Baltic ports. Klapeida is the nearest port to Belarus, Ukraine and Russia's southern region."
Several other modernization efforts are underway at the port, Lukauskas reports. Construction of the Ro-Ro terminal was completed last year. The dredging of the port is continuing, with a goal of 40 meters' depth.
"The largest ship in the Baltic Sea can be 17 to 17.5 meters (under water)," Lukauskas said. "In comparison with our port, of course Ventspils and Tallinn are deeper than Klapeida, but in comparison with Riga, Liepaja, and Kaliningrad, Klapeida is deeper."
Also, the harbor entrance is being rehabilitated with newly reconstructed breakwaters and a deeper entrance channel. Several smaller projects are also going on, including the reconstruction of the railways interface and reconstruction of the quay walls. A future project, Lukauskas adds, is to build a terminal for cruise vessels.
The BLG move is not the first time Germans have taken an interest in Klapeida. Germans dominated the city from the mid-13th to parts of the 20th century. In 1252, after destroying a tribal settlement on its territory, the Germans gave the region its first city charter, calling it Memel.
By the late 16th century, the Germans started commissioning the building of large ships. In 1797 the city was granted free trade privileges, and by the middle of the 19th century there were already 80 merchant vessels registered there. After World War I, Germany lost Klapeida and the city was given over to French administration. An uprising in 1923 put the city under the control of the Lithuanians, but in 1939 Klapeida was thrust back into German hands, at Hitler's demand. Then in January 1945, the Soviet army moved in.
Because of its various occupations, Klapeida was considerably underdeveloped for much of this century. The third largest city in Lithuania with a population of 200,000, Klapeida is often ignored in discussions of Baltic ports. In the "Euroports" site on the World Wide Web (curiously linked to the Klapeida State Seaport Authority site, www.spk.lt), Klapeida is notably left out of a directory of Baltic Sea ports.
And as shipping via Klapeida could be experiencing a resurgence, Lithuanian fishing may have a little longer way to go.
Zita Tallat-Kelpsaite, editor of the weekly Jura and one of the more unrestrained Klapeida pundits, wrote that local politics and fishermen's attitudes are holding things up.
"Soviet Lithuania's largest fishing fleet of several hundred vessels died slowly at the beginning of independence. It has turned into a target for intrigue by the Lithuanian officials and for a quick profit by its constantly changing local authorities," she wrote. "Unemployed fishermen did not feel like joining the army of the market place hawks; they knock about various foreign ports and often become hirelings for ship's crews which sail under dubious flags and law of the jungle. Still they are on the look-out for other flags to sail under, because in this country their services are barely in demand."
But as much of Tallat-Kelpsaite's message contends, Lithuania may now have a much brighter future as a maritime state.
"Certainly, this coastline of 99 kilometres and territorial waters of 576 square miles are a far cry from the maritime possibilities of Great Britain, France, Norway, Sweden or even Estonia or Latvia," she wrote. "However, even deliberate ignorance cannot fail to testify to the evident fact that Lithuania's bustling independent shipping is making its competitors, who are aiming at controlling the Baltic shipping market, lose sleep at night."
And then there are hyperboles.
Please enter your username and password.
2024 © The Baltic Times /Cookies Policy
