Sea country and sea transport

Sea Country and Sea Transport

Estonia is situated in North-Eastern Europe, on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. To the north it is bordered by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the east by Russia and to the south by Latvia. The shortest route from Russia by sea to China and also to Western Europe and North America is through the Baltic States.

Estonia is a sea country – the length of the coastline (3794km) is about 6 times longer than the mainland borderline. Therefore shipping has long traditions and is well developed. Estonia’s sea transportation system is also connected to that of the other European ports.

Estonian ports have been developed eventually into the successful hubs for handling of transit and export and import goods and have a good track record of high quality services.

Port of Tallinn is the biggest European Union port in the Baltic Sea region. There are daily passenger and cargo ferry links to Finland and Sweden, as well as frequent cargo lines to Russia, Latvia, Poland, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, UK, etc. Port of Tallinn handled roughly 7 million passengers in 2006 and ranks second in the region.

Port of Tallinn is the biggest port authority in Estonia. With its location on the southern coast of the Finnish Gulf in the Baltic Sea, Port of Tallinn is ideally placed for cargo trans-shipments between Western Europe and Russia.

Port of Tallinn is a state-owned limited liability company. The Republic of Estonia owns 100% of the shares and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications manages the shareholding on behalf of the State.

The majority of cargo handled in the port is of transit origin, taking up 85% of the total volume. Efficient SCM solutions have been developed, for example, for liquid bulk. It only takes for about 30 minutes for liquid bulk to cross the Russian border.

Port of Tallinn consists of five constituent harbours. Muuga Harbour is the main cargo harbour of Estonia. Paldiski South Harbour is another major cargo harbour in Port of Tallinn. It has been developed into a car distribution center for Ford, Honda and Toyota for the Baltic Region.

The emphasis of the future growth in Port of Tallinn is to develop the container handling capacity. The aim is to dramatically increase containers handling capacity and create the best conditions for handling direct calls of ocean going ships from Asia with the capacity up to 6000 TEU.