The International Transport Forum released in January a new study on the impact of mega-ships on the port of Gothenburg, Sweden's largest port. Gothenburg handles 57% of the country's container traffic and is thus a critical asset for both the region and national economy.
The report notes that the most important challenge for Gothenburg is to remain attractive for direct calls from ocean-going vessels. In practice, this means attracting the new container mega-ships serving the Asia-North Europe trade lane, as Asia is Sweden's main export market for containerised goods.
Thanks in part to container terminal upgrades, Gothenburg has been successful in attracting some of these direct calls. Because of constraints to the depth of the port access channel and container berths, many ship types cannot call Gothenburg when fully loaded, in some cases not even half loaded. While this is not a major problem for the moment, the increasing average ship size caused by mega-ships and the cascading effect they have on all trade lanes, will at some point require deepening the access channel and berths to maintain Gothenburg's strong position.
Against this background the report makes three main recommendations:
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