The Baltic Sea offers our forwarding agents seagoing routes to north and north-west - to Finland and Scandinavian countries. Our immediate neighbour country Poland has several sea ports and two of them - Sczecin and Swinoujscie will be presented here.

The Sczecin harbour is situated 65 km off the Oder estuary and the Swinoujscie is perched off in the Sczecin Bay at the very edge of the open Baltic Sea. In virtue of its advantageous siting and excellent system of rail and road system, and an easy river shipping option from several industrial centres of central and south-eastern Europe, the Sczecin-Swinoujscie complex has become a significant freight transit point.

Several years ago the overall business of the Sczecin and Swinoujscie harbours was legally transformed to a operate as a shareholding company. This merit proved to be decisive in terms of global decision making, infrastructure, planning, harbour development implementation, and also marketing and commercial policy.

Modern technology prevails in both harbours

The company manages an area of 1 760 hectares, including 540 hectares of waters. The sea front expands along 19,5 kilometres. The Sczecin and Swinoujscie harbours are equipped by the latest technology suitable for any mode of goods handling. This includes also three special terminals for group goods, 50 ton lifting capacity sea front cranes, floating cranes for piece cargo, as well as container handling, pallete handling and piece handling installations.

The Sczecin container terminal is used mostly for the LO-LO and RO-RO ships dispatching. It is also important to know what kind of ships can be accommodated in the harbours. The Swinoujscie harbour accepts up to 12,80 m draft ships, and the Sczecin harbour allows entry for ships with 9,5 m draft.

In addition the forwarding agents use services of other companies providing a wide range of auxiliary services. Both harbours offer 635 000 square meters of open-space and sheltered storage facilities, a 73 000 cubic meters of grain siloes, and a 12,000 ton deep-freeze storage facility.

As in other world harbours, also the Sczecin and Swinoujscie has duty-free zones made available for the following activities: removal and storage of goods, goods processing and value adding, introduction of needed technological processes, hire of open-space and sheltered harbour areas for storage, any activities related to freight-handling for ships and other means of transport.

The circulation of goods between the duty free zone and foreign countries is unlimited and the harbour administration guarantees its reliable dispatching service to international practice.

An interesting piece of information for Slovak businesses in need of the overseas shipment: the Sczecin harbour is connected with the Slovenian Koper harbour through a combined transport arrangements (container transport), and the freight collecting centre established in the Bratislava port.

Slovak Trade FORUM