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The Vuosaari Harbour is to be completed in the end of 2008.
Photo: Port of Helsinki

Photo: Port of Helsinki

Vuosaari: Efficient harbour for unitised cargo
Purpose-built for the handling of unitised goods such as trailers and containers, the new Vuosaari harbour of Helsinki will be fully operational at the end of 2008.
The Vuosaari project is the largest investment ever in the port sector in Finland. Today the cost of the framework with fairway and hinterland connections totals nearly EUR 700 million.

The new harbour is situated east of the city centre of Helsinki. The construction of the Vuosaari Harbour is proceeding on schedule, and the port activities in the West Harbour and North Harbour will be moved to Vuosaari at the end of November 2008.

A large part of the harbour business park will also be completed by the end of 2008. The new road connection from the harbour to the ring road III was opened to traffic already on 9 October 2007. Also the fairway to the port is ready. The railway connection will be completed in time for the opening of the harbour.

Three operators
The Vuosaari Harbour is planned and built to handle unitised cargo, e.g. trailers, trucks and containers. There will be three port operators, Finnsteve Oyj, Steveco Oy and Multi-Link Terminals Oy, all running their own terminals. They make the investments in cargo handling equipment, buildings and systems. All of them are involved in container traffic and all but Multi-Link Terminals also in ro-ro traffic.
The port operators make huge investments in terminal buildings and equipment. For example Finnsteve, the largest operator in the port, invests EUR 100 million. This includes four new container gantry cranes and mobile cranes. Multilink Terminals moves three container cranes from Western Harbour to Vuosaari. Steveco will operate one new ship-to-shore gantry crane and mobile container cranes. All operators have also made investments in different kinds of superstructure.

	Heikki Nissinen, managing director of Port of Helsinki. Photo: Port of Helsinki

Cargo and information
“The Port of Helsinki provides the basic infrastructure, including quays, storage areas, roads, networks and lighting”, explains managing director Heikki Nissinen of the Port of Helsinki.

Compared to the present situation with the cargo handling scattered to two ports, the Vuosaari harbour will be a great improvement.

“Everything will be at the one and same place, which brings numerous advantages. As there are many different operators in the port, the internal arrangements are of great importance to ensure smooth traffic flows to and from the terminals.”

And it is not only a question of cargo. The flow of information between the interested parties in the port is considerable.

“The systems must guarantee smooth and fast flow of information between the Customs, the port operators and the main gate. Automatic identification systems are of course nothing new, but on this scale their implementation is a great challenge”.

Ideal location
The site at Vuosaari had been allocated for port operations a long time before the building actually started in early 2003. Mr Nissinen thinks that the location is perfect when taking into consideration the directions of the cargo.
“Situated at the end of the ring road III the location is optimized to the first stops for cargo discharged in the port and also for cargo entering the port from land. From the present harbours in the city the traffic is fed directly to the street network and certain problems in connection with this will no longer exist in Vuosaari.”

A motorway-type road with two lanes in both directions leads to the main gate of the Vuosaari Harbour. When leaving the port, the trucks are directly on the orbital road with its junctions to the main highways. Also the railway connection is in a class of its own. On the marshalling yard outside the port area the wagons are combined into trains, which are sent straight to their destinations. The railroad track from the port is connected to the main railroad network at Kerava.
Today most of the cargo is carried to and from the port of Helsinki by road vehicles. Mr Nissinen thinks that the excellent connections to the new port will change this, at least partially.

“Vuosaari Harbour offers much better possibilities to increase the share of railway transports. Time may show how this will turn out, but we expect that the share of goods carried on railway will reach some 20 per cent in quite a short time.”

Growth potential
Inside the port area the logistic areas are optimised for the actual types of cargo to be handled in the port. Both ro-ro and container handling require large areas for the storage of units. The infrastructure allows an estimated annual ro-ro handling capacity of between 700,000 and 800,000 trucks and trailers, compared to the estimate of 470,000 units this year in the old facilities.
The layout of the three container terminals allows the container handling capacity to increase hand in hand with the traffic growth by acquiring more cranes and handling equipment as well as by enlarging the storage areas.

“The port area will be fully built out already from the beginning, but the equipment of the port operators will be dimensioned to the actual traffic”, explains Mr Nissinen.

The harbour is designed for an annual container turnover of some 1.3 million TEUs. It is estimated that the port of Helsinki will handle some 440,000 TEUs in 2007. Only about three per cent of the containers handled in Helsinki are related to transit traffic.

“Transit containers require more space as the average storage time for a transit container in the port area is about a week. A container with goods for Finland stays no more than three or four days in the port,” informs Mr Nissinen.
In the Vuosaari Harbour there will also be facilities for importing cars. From 25,000 to 30,000 cars are imported in the port of Helsinki annually, and they are exclusively intended for the Finnish market.

“We see a growth potential in this business. In Finland about 140,000 new cars are registered each year. Of these 40 per cent are sold in the Helsinki area.”

Photo: Port of Helsinki

Flexibility
In the Vuosaari-project the fact that the world is likely to change quite a lot during the long time the port will be operational is of course also taken into consideration. The quays are therefore designed for both container and ro-ro traffic.

“In this way we will be prepared for future changes in the structure of the cargo volumes. It is most certain that changes will occur in the shares between rubber tyre units and containers during the decades.”

The fairway depth of 11 m allows calls of container vessels with a capacity up to 2,500 TEUs. Regarding ro-ro vessels Mr Nissinen says that the depth will be quite sufficient also in the future but it is by no way ruled out that the feeder container vessels of the future will be even bigger in the Baltic Sea. The berths primarily intended for container handling are therefore constructed with a larger water depth than the fairway.

“If there will be a need to offer traffic with larger vessels in the future, only the fairway has to be deepened.”

Mr Nissinen stresses that even if it is important to keep the port modern for decades with the help of careful planning of the infrastructure, it is the port operators that make the port efficient.

“The most important issues when talking about a modern port are the cargo handling equipment and the information systems,” he says.

//Pär-Henrik Sjöström

Latest update 22-10-2007 15:22

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