What is the secret of a successful port?
Magnus could give you the answer to that in his sleep. Large volumes of freight to attract shipping lines and a port with many direct destinations.
Gothenburg serves a large part of Sweden. Every day 26 ´commuter´ freight trains arrive at the Port of Gothenburg from all over Sweden. Good railroad connections to a port provide transportation advantages and volume. Today around 50 percent of containers to and from the harbor come and go by rail. Today Gothenburg has regular shipping lines to most parts of the world. More freight means more frequent container ships and car carriers, which run on fixed routes around the world as though on rails.

The Port of Gothenburg is CSI certified which means that the USA approves customs clearance of containers in Sweden for direct shipping to America without their having to clear customs there. The US has six customs officers in Gothenburg; they work together with Swedish customs.

In addition to the container port there is a Ro-Ro harbor (Roll on/Roll off), an oil terminal and a car terminal. 50 percent of Sweden´s crude oil is imported through Gothenburg. The Ro-Ro harbor is where rolling loads — usually trailers — are unloaded and loaded. Stena is a major Ro-Ro player and combines Ro-Ro and passengers, which means more frequent traffic. Paper products and steel exports often go by Ro-Ro ship.

Today the Port of Gothenburg has 130 employees; it owns harbor land, which it leases to specialized operators. The operators that run the port have operations around the world and are specialists in the type of harbor they operate in. The Port of Gothenburg strives to be a good landlord by providing the port with good conditions, an excellent infrastructure and by marketing the port around the world. Gothenburg will invest in even larger cranes that are ready to serve the biggest container ships that will arrive in a few years and which can carry 18,000 containers.

How can a port work with energy and environmental issues?
The ships are connected to shore power so that the electricity consumed by the ships is not generated by their own machinery. Ships that run on low sulfur fuel are given a discount on their harbor charges, and the port is working to get twin rail tracks on Hisingen in order to increase railroad traffic to and from the port. There will be tougher regulations for the sulfur content in fuel for ships in the Baltic Sea in 2015. The Port of Gothenburg thinks that more ships will run on natural gas and we have therefore invested in an LNG facility in order to fuel such ships. Gothenburg can then become even more attractive as a transit harbor for Baltic Sea traffic, as the biggest ships do not enter the Baltic.

How will the port look in 10 years?
Magnus tells us that it will be more than twice as big. All types of loads will have increased. Oil harbor operations will have increased but there will be more renewable fuels in the loads. Container and Ro-Ro will expand a great deal, The port will have shore power available at every berth, it will have bigger cranes and a larger proportion of traffic to and from the port will be by rail. Continual development of the Port of Gothenburg moves Sweden closer to the world´s markets.