399 metres at the Hel Quay. What the MSC Venice call really changes for Gdynia

Shortly after five in the morning on Friday 24 July, the container ship MSC Venice entered the Port of Gdynia. At 399 metres she is the largest vessel in the port's century-long history and the first Baltmax class ship handled at its terminals. Behind that single manoeuvre lies a multi-year investment programme whose results can now be measured to the metre. What remains open is whether Gdynia can convert that technical capability into market share before the fate of its Outer Port is decided.

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25 july 2026   |   11:05   |   Source: Gazeta Morska   |   Prepared by: Kamil Kusier   |   Print

fot. Port Gdynia

A caller from the Britannia ocean service

MSC Venice measures 399 metres in length and 54 metres in beam, with a capacity of 18,755 TEU. She was built in China in 2016 and sails under the Liberian flag. She called at Gdynia on the Britannia ocean service linking Europe with the Far East.

Her onward rotation shows where Gdynia sits in the chain. The ship leaves the port on 27 July for Klaipeda, then Le Havre, Antwerp and London, before heading for Asia with calls at Colombo, Port Klang, Singapore, Ningbo, Shanghai, Nansha, Yantian and Vung Tau. Gdynia is therefore served on the Baltic leg of the rotation, ahead of the western European ports and the Far East run proper.

The call had been announced weeks in advance and postponed twice. The original date was Sunday 19 July, then 21 July, with the ship finally entering on 24 July. Weather was the reason. That detail matters more than it appears: manoeuvring a vessel of this length through a port entrance 140 metres wide requires a weather window that cannot be booked for a fixed date. The constraint will not disappear with subsequent calls. It is a permanent feature of the operation.

The vessel berthed at the Hel Quay, home to Baltic Container Terminal. Gdynia joined the Britannia service in April 2025, when MSC Rose, 364 metres long with a capacity above 15,000 TEU, first berthed at BCT. The port has featured in MSC's ocean network since 2018.

What had to be rebuilt before this ship could enter

The capability to receive such a vessel did not come from a single project but from several run in parallel by different bodies. The port's statement notes that for a vessel of this size to enter safely, the entire infrastructure from the port entrance through to the berth at the container terminal had to be adapted. A bottleneck at any one point would have voided the rest of the spending.

The inner port entrance was widened from 100 to 140 metres. Inner basins were dredged to 15.9 metres. Quays along the Port Canal were rebuilt, including the Hel Quay where BCT operates, adapting it for the safe mooring and handling of the largest container ships operating in the Baltic. Turning Basin No. 2 was enlarged to a diameter of 480 metres, which only became possible after the floating dock of the PGZ Naval Shipyard was relocated. New quayside cranes capable of serving larger container ships were installed.

Together these works allow the port to handle vessels up to 400 metres in length with a draught of up to 14.5 metres. The turning basin deserves particular attention, being the least obvious element for readers outside the sector. A ship of nearly 400 metres needs somewhere to turn in order to leave bow first. Without a basin wider than the vessel is long, the rest of the investment would have been useless. That a first manoeuvre with a ship of this size passed without incident confirms the soundness of the engineering.

The works involved the Port of Gdynia Authority, the Maritime Office in Gdynia, the Polish Navy and design bureaux, among them WUPROHYD of Gdynia. The relocation of a shipyard dock to make room for a turning basin illustrates how far such an undertaking reaches beyond the port authority's own remit.

Why the Baltic has a size class of its own

The term Baltmax, which appears in the port's communications, needs explaining, because it is often confused with the largest container ship class in the world.

The Baltic is an enclosed sea reached through the Danish straits. The depth and clearance of those passages set the upper limit on the size of vessel that can enter at all. Deep draught ships use the Great Belt, where the constraint becomes air draught under the bridge. Baltmax therefore means the largest container ship able to operate in the Baltic, not the largest container ship afloat. Vessels in the 24,000 TEU range, deployed on Asia to Europe services calling at North Sea ports, do not enter the Baltic and will not.

That distinction carries strategic weight. Competition between Baltic ports is not about handling the world's largest ships but about the role of regional transhipment node. The ability to accept a 400-metre vessel is an entry condition in that contest rather than an advantage in itself.

The scale on which Gdynia competes with Gdańsk

The figures put the enthusiasm in order.

2025 was a record year for containers in Gdynia. Throughput passed one million TEU for the first time in the port's history, reaching 1.038 million, a rise of 5.27 percent year on year. The ro-ro segment grew by more than 18 percent. At the same time total throughput fell by 4.4 percent to 25.7 million tonnes, largely on grain, where low world prices and the return of Ukrainian exports to Black Sea routes both weighed. The company's forecast net profit for 2025 is around 142 million złoty, 2.5 percent above the previous year.

Within the port itself the sharpest growth came at Gdynia Container Terminal, which handled 465,000 TEU in the form of 258,936 boxes across 569 vessel calls. That is 19 percent up year on year and a record for the terminal, giving it close to a 45 percent share of the port's container throughput. BCT's result, meanwhile, was achieved while the Hel Quay was under reconstruction, the same berth where MSC Venice has now called.

For comparison, Baltic Hub in Gdańsk closed 2025 at 2,767,287 TEU, up 23.4 percent. It handled 763 vessels, 265 of them ocean-going. Following the commissioning of terminal T3 its capacity stands at 4.5 million TEU a year, with the 717-metre T3 quay dredged to 17.5 metres. In October 2025 the terminal set a single call record of 20,962 TEU aboard OOCL Japan. In March 2026 it set a monthly record of 291,918 TEU.

The comparison is unforgiving. The Port of Gdynia's record annual container result corresponds to roughly three and a half months of work at a single terminal in Gdańsk. That is not an argument against Gdynia's investment. It is an indication of the scale at which the conversation is taking place.

Deepwater, but not in the same sense as Gdańsk

The port authority and the infrastructure ministry both framed Friday's call as a breakthrough.

Piotr Gorzeński, president of the Port of Gdynia Authority, called the arrival of MSC Venice a historic moment for the port. He added that Gdynia had spent recent years preparing for it through consistent modernisation, and that the growth in the port's real operational capability is now plain to see. In his assessment the port can safely receive the largest container ships operating in the Baltic, offering carriers and logistics operators a new standard of service and strengthening its position in international supply chains.

The operator of the terminal where the ship berthed also spoke. Patrick Chan, president of the BCT management board, called the MSC Venice call a breakthrough moment for BCT and for the Port of Gdynia. In his assessment it confirms the soundness of the investments made by all parties involved, which have enabled a new generation of larger container ships to be handled, and strengthens Gdynia's position as one of the key deepwater ports supporting the Polish economy.

Arkadiusz Marchewka, secretary of state at the Ministry of Infrastructure, argued that the development of Polish ports bears directly on the competitiveness of the economy and on supply chain security. He added that the MSC Venice call shows that money spent on port infrastructure is delivering measurable results, and that strong, modern ports mean wider opportunities for Polish businesses and a stronger Polish position in international trade.

The precision of the port president's wording is worth noting. He speaks of the largest container ships operating in the Baltic, not the largest container ships in the world. The distinction is often lost in commentary, and it matters for judging the scale of the change. Gdynia can today handle a 400-metre vessel at up to 14.5 metres of draught, at terminals situated well inside the port canal. Baltic Hub operates quays dredged to 17.5 metres, directly off the Gulf of Gdańsk, without the need to navigate a canal or turn the ship inside the port. These are two distinct operational categories, however comfortably both fit under the label deepwater port. The world's largest container ships, in the 24,000 TEU range, do not enter the Baltic at all.

It also matters that MSC Venice calls at both Gdynia and Gdańsk on the Britannia rotation, rather than at Gdynia instead of Gdańsk. The call does not represent cargo taken from a competitor but the addition of Gdynia to a rotation. The real value of the change will show only in the throughput figures of coming quarters, once it becomes clear how many carriers will regularly bring vessels of this size into the canal given the weather windows and manoeuvring times involved.

Defence and offshore in the background

Two dimensions of this reach beyond commercial logistics and appear less often in port communications.

The first is defence. Gdynia is simultaneously a commercial port and the principal base of the Polish Navy, and the Outer Port project explicitly provides for handling military equipment. The capacity to receive very large vessels carries weight here beyond the throughput calculation, particularly given current levels of military and logistics activity across the Baltic. The relocation of the naval shipyard dock to create a turning basin is itself a reminder that the commercial and military functions compete for the same space in Gdynia.

The second is offshore wind. Polish waters are a construction site for offshore wind farms, and port infrastructure for that sector remains a bottleneck along the whole coast. The Outer Port provides for offshore cargo handling, but on a timeline in which the first phase of Polish wind projects will already have been completed.

The Outer Port, a procedure without a conclusion

The operational capability demonstrated this week is transitional in the sense that it represents the maximum obtainable from the port's existing layout. The next step requires going beyond the present breakwater.

The Outer Port is to be built on reclaimed land extending the Silesian Quay and the Coal Pier beyond the existing Main Breakwater. The planned scope is around 150 hectares of new land and 3,330 metres of quays dredged to 17 metres. A container terminal would occupy 1,660 metres of quay with annual capacity of at least 2.5 million TEU, some two and a half times the current container throughput of the entire port. Handling of military equipment and offshore cargo is also foreseen. The investment exceeds 5 billion złoty and is to be delivered as a public private partnership.

The procedure to select a private partner has run as a competitive dialogue since November 2020, with five rounds completed by the end of 2023. The deadline for final bids has been moved repeatedly. October 2023 was the original target, followed by a series of later dates including 30 June 2026, then 14 July 2026, and finally, by a decision taken in July, 30 September 2026. The port authority attributes the postponements to its obligation to give bidders time to absorb changes to the tender documents. The scale of those changes is telling: in the first half of 2026 alone, participants submitted around 350 questions and 250 proposed amendments.

Four parties remain in the process. The port has placed signature of the PPP agreement in the 2026 to 2027 horizon. Even assuming a partner is selected this September, partial commissioning of the terminal realistically falls in the early 2030s.

Those dates are worth setting against Gdańsk. Terminal T3 at Baltic Hub took three years to build, was formally inaugurated in June 2025, reached full operability in early October of the same year, and its effect, an additional 1.5 million TEU of capacity, is already visible in the statistics. Over the same period Gdynia was conducting a competitive dialogue.

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największy statek w historii Portu Gdynia Port Gdynia MSC Venice kontenerowiec 400 metrów przeładunki kontenerowe

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