SMART CITY
Looking beyond the horizon
Port of Hanko, located at the southernmost tip of Finland, is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
As the role of shipping in Finland’s economy only seems to be getting more significant, the ports need to find ways to further improve their operations for the
benefit of freight forwarders. The 150-year-old Port of Hanko opens up new channels to productivity by the means of digitalization and green transition.
TEXT: TIMO MANSIKKA-AHO
L
argely due to Finland’s geographical location, the country has always been highly dependent on shipping. Already the medieval Hanseatic trade created commercial ports in the Northern parts of the Baltic Sea, and even today a vast majority of Finland’s trade is transported by sea. As a matter of fact, the numbers are only growing. In 2022, maritime transport handled 94 % of Finnish exports and 91,1 % of imports. The total share of foreign trade was 92,4 % – nothing short of astonishing. In this light, it is by no means an understatement to say that ports have an extremely significant role when it comes to Finland’s well-being. How ports develop their operations to continuously meet the ever-evolving demands of forwarding companies, end customers, and the society in general has a very direct effect on Finnish companies and on the entire country’s competitiveness.
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BUSINESS CLASS | AUTUMN 2023
“We keep developing our digital solutions to make operations more efficient. This means, among other things, ensuring that there are as few empty or one-way transportations as possible to and from our ports”, says Anders Ahlvik, the CEO at Port of Hanko.
Port of Hanko, located at the southernmost tip of Finland, is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year. Focusing on the European markets where Finland’s foreign trade most flourishes, country’s third largest commercial port – and the only one operating 24/7/365 – has its sights firmly set on the future. “Speed is one of the biggest assets in the business of moving goods from one point to the other”, Anders Ahlvik, the CEO at Port of Hanko, says. “We want to provide services that enable taking the goods that are produced in Finland during the day out of the country by the evening.” As a proof of that enablement, 40 ships sail away from the port of Hanko every week, at least one of which heads to every main market area daily. With three locations in Hanko area, each specializing in its own kind of traffic, the transportation chain has been designed to be immensely effective at Port
