WIADOMOŚCI GDYŃSKIE
“PZT – Export Showcase of the Gdynia Port”
Issue 1(71) YEAR XII, January-February 2007

The Gdynia Port Technical Company started its activity 12 years ago, on 1 April, 1995. As a result of As a result of the Gdynia Sea Port Management having been commercialised, the PZT took over the responsibilities and tasks executed by the former chief engineering departments and its major task was maintaining the port’s infrastructure. One of the results of the commercialisation having been performed was the revealing of excess employment in the port. For this reason the PZT started looking for opportunities also outside the harbour, in the sphere of typically mechanical services relating to the assembling of port loading equipment. Its first technical task was the construction of 8 silos for storing corn and ground grain in the Gdynia Baltic Grain Terminal. Later, the employees of PZT assembled a large device, named Vigan, for loading dry goods for the Gdynia Maritime Bulk Terminal. The next commission was received from the Finnish company Konecranes VLC and it concerned 16 gantry cranes on rubber wheels for their American terminals in New York and Norfolk as well as in Panama. However, the most spectacular undertaking was the assembly carried out in the year 2001 of the largest gantry crane in Europe, 126 metres in height, for the Gdynia Shipyard. This “examination” was passed by the PZT with flying colours and so a series of other crane-related commissions followed. The PZT currently specialises in the assembling of large steel constructions, of cranes and gantry cranes, and in overhauls of loading and transporting equipment. In the year 2002 29 gantry cranes were constructed in the PZT, whilst 19 were manufactured in the following year. In 2004 the PZT broke its record when 36 self-propelled container gantry cranes were assembled. The following year 20 of them were made, with the recipients being container terminals in the USA, Spain, Portugal, Africa and Russia.

The primary task of 2005 was however the assembly of panamax-Konecranes type ship-to-shore container gantry crane for the Baltic Container Terminal in Gdynia and a large grappling loading device, weighing 800 tonnes and 60 metres high, was assembled and shipped to England, for the port in Bristol. In 2006, apart from the assemblies performed on port premises, the first assembly commission abroad was executed: an assembly of two container gantry cranes in the land terminal in Birmingham and the assembling of a dozen or so RTG gantry cranes in some remote parts in the world. At the same time, the technical potential of building departments to service nearly the whole of the port’s infrastructure is being systematically adjusted to the requirements set by the Gdynia Port. The PZT holds now a substantial development potential, i.e. an enormous amount of synergy that can manage to achieve a great deal and overcome all kinds of obstacles. A good example of that is the fact that in 2006 the PZT commenced a new activity: now, if requested to do so by commissioning parties, the PZT workers assemble gantry cranes abroad. At the moment a dozen or so persons are engaged in assemblies abroad. The company’s specialists have already worked in Brazil, Chile, Belgium. Great Britain, India and in Estonia. The next contracts include: Argentina, Italy, France, the United Arab Emirates and Latvia.

2007 is a particularly busy year for PZT: participation in the modernisation of the Hamburg terminal, the modernisation being one of the greatest in the world; increasing loading capacity by 100% by virtue of installation of gantry cranes operating in the automatic mode and assembly of container gantry cranes for the newest Polish container terminal, DCT from Gdańsk.