Type of port: combined river/sea

Cargo turnover: 33.5 million tonnes (2001)

Container turnover: 698,000 TEU, flats and cassettes included (2001)

Total number of berths: 151

Total length of berths (actual; where appropriate, maximum vessel length): 11,955 metres

Total port land area: ab 3.6 million square metres

Maximum depth of water at berth: 19.6 metres

(in oil harbours 19.6 metres; in container/ro-ro harbours 12 metres; at inner-harbour berths: 9.5 metres)

Amount and capacity of technical equipment:

Cranes: Eight ship-to-shore container cranes (including two post-panamax cranes) with capacities ranging from 45 tonnes in continuous container handling to 70 tonnes in heavy-lift situations; two transtainer-type yard container cranes for train-terminal shifting.

Trucks, tractors, etc: 27 straddle carriers, 60 terminal tractors, 7 reach-stackers, 44 diesel fork-lifts (4-42 tonnes capacity), 59 electrical fork-lifts (1.2-7.5 tonnes capacity), 3 container movers, ab 369 terminal trailers, 8 translifter units.

Port operator: Göteborgs Hamn AB (Port of Göteborg Ltd), a combined port authority and stevedoring company with the City of Göteborg as the sole shareholder.

Cargo

The Port of Göteborg not only serves its own area but also the whole of the Nordic region. Almost one-third of the port's general cargo is in fact in the process of being trans-shipped between a Nordic country other than Sweden and the rest of the world (e g Finnish newsprint destined for Australia and Taiwanese video cassette recorders bound for Norway).

The Port of Göteborg has a range of direct-call deep-sea services that is unrivalled in Scandinavia. Every week, there are three departures each for North America, the Far East and Australia, which are the most frequent deep-sea destinations. The cargo shipped deep-sea is mostly containerized, even when feeder vessels are used for transhipment via Continental ports. There are also several deep-sea ro/ro services with special facilities for the transport of products such as earth-moving equipment, harvesters, helicopters and bulky cargo on ship's trailers.

Apart from containers, deep-sea cargo at Göteborg includes trade cars, oil, and fruit. About 275,000 trade cars were shipped in 2001 and Göteborg is by far the largest car port in the Nordic region. The oil handled at the port is both crude and refined; there are three oil refineries at Göteborg and several oil companies have national depots here. Fruit imports in this case refers to bananas - a ship arrives each week from Central America with containers filled with bananas.

Because the uniqueness of the port's deep-sea services, Göteborg is probably thought of as a transoceanic liner port. However, the bulk of its traffic has always been intra-European. The services are either bi-lateral or feeder services with transhipment to ocean vessels at Göteborg or at a Continental port. The sailing frequencies at Göteborg are high, with a vessel departing for or arriving from a British port every six hours. The Continental connection is even tighter with one vessel every four hours, excluding ferry traffic.

The Ships

In a typical year, the Port of Göteborg is visited by 12,000 vessels. Most of these calls are made by short-sea ferries, the rest being mainly tankers, container vessels and cargo-only roll on/roll off ferries.

The largest vessels calling at the port are not crude oil tankers, which would have been a fair guess, but container vessels. Some of the world's largest container vessels, Maersk Sealand's K- and S-class liners in Europe-to-Far East traffic, berth at the Skandia container terminal each week. These ships are of post-panamax size, i.e. they exceed the measurements of the Panama Canal locks. The S-class vessels are 347 metres long and 43 metres wide. They have a container capacity of 6,600 TEU.

The feeder vessels of 200 to 1,000 TEU container capacity are the 'buses' of the liner service world. Deep-sea operators choosing not to call at a Scandinavian port directly (but turning their vessels around in, say, Hamburg) can still be active in the Scandinavian freight market. They use feeder vessels to forward the containers from Scandinavia to a Continental port for transhipment.

While the feeder vessels look small compared to the deep-sea liners, appearances can be deceptive. Even a small feeder vessel of 240 TEU can load what four full-length freight trains are permitted to carry on the Swedish railways.