From December 2009, Maersk will extend its AE10 Far East service with 8,000TEU vessels calling DCT Gdansk on a weekly basis. Introducing direct calls through DCT Gdansk will change the dynamics of serving the Baltic Sea region and opens a new era of container shipping in this part of the world. As a result DCT Gdansk SA becomes Poland's largest container terminal. The first AE10 call will be made by the 8,200TEU Maersk Taikung, which is due to depart from Shanghai on December 1 with an ETA in Gdansk on January 5, 2010. The port rotation will be: Ningbo, Shanghai, Kaohsiung, Yantian, Hong Kong, Tanjung Pelepas, Le Havre, Zeebrugge, Gdansk, Gothenburg, Aarhus, Bremerhaven, Rotterdam, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kobe, Nagoya, Shimizu, Yokohama, Ningbo. Securing this service is a double triumph for DCT Gdansk, explains its CEO, Boris Wenzel: "This is a historic moment for the Polish port industry. For almost 40 years, there have been direct container services linking Asia and Europe but most terminated in Germany and relied on transshipment to serve Scandinavia and the Baltic. While many analysts doubted the economics of sending post-Panamax ships into the Baltic Sea, we have always held the belief that large vessels would come directly to Gdansk as it develops into the gateway to central Europe and Russia. "The crisis has just functioned as a time-accelerator and made it happen earlier than we planned. Now that the market is created, we are convinced that more lines will choose to add DCT to their mainline schedules and we are already planning options for increasing our handling capability to service this demand." Commenting on the short period since Maersk started to cooperate with DCT Gdansk, Boris Wenzel stated: "We knew just how well we would have to perform to justify this new business. Our workers have performed brilliantly and Maersk's ships have been handled with extreme efficiency. Indeed, Maersk's own terminal scorecard ranks DCT Gdansk in first place among Northern European terminals." DCT Gdansk is convinced that other major carriers will follow Maersk's lead by extending their service networks to include DCT Gdansk. Boris Wenzel adds: "Poland is a country of nearly 40 million people and should not be reliant on feeder and overland links to ports like Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Rotterdam when, at the same time, DCT is able to accommodate the large vessels that call at these ports." DCT Gdansk offers ideal conditions to service all types and sizes of vessel, has the longest rail terminal in Poland offering excellent rail connections, and a 200ha logistics park adjacent to the terminal is being tendered out. Both the terminal and rail facilities have significant expansion capabilities which will allow DCT to compete with German and Benelux ports. In the medium term, DCT Gdansk should also develop as a gateway to the whole Central Europe as it believes it is better located than German ports to service these destinations.