BPO has elected a new chairman

General Assembly of the Baltic Ports Organization has elected Julian Skelnik, a vice-president of the Port of Gdañsk, as its new chairman. Mr. Julian Skelnik has substituted Mrs. Christel Wiman, the managing director of the Ports of Stockholm, who chaired the BPO for the last five years.

Christel Wiman in her farewell speech said: “Nowadays we can observe a big change in the economic map of the Baltic. As the economic growth is currently moving over to the South and East, it is high time that we chose someone from that part of Europe to be the chairman of BPO”.

General Assembly of BPO has also elected two vice-chairmen: Heikki Nissinen, managing director of the Port of Helsinki and Mr. Bjarne Mathiesen, the managing director of the Port of Aarhus (re-election). General Assembly of the BPO was held in Sopot, Poland on 6-7-8 of September 2007.

The meeting was accompanied by a conference, which gathered 100 executives from all major Baltic ports, port-related industries, port international organisations, members of the European Parliament, consulting companies, academia and media. During the conference the issues of 'Relations between Baltic Port Region and Central and Eastern European Countries' were presented and discussed by top-level spokespersons – representatives of governments, transport, politics and academics. The lectures presented were received with high interest, giving the conference participants’ a unique opportunity to learn about actual problems and challenges the Baltic ports have to face, along with realizing their developmental goals. The conference was also attended by the Black Sea ports: Bulgarian ports, Constantza, Trabzon (Turkey), which gave a chance to discuss possible business opportunities between ports from the Baltic and the Black Sea regions.

The BPO General Assembly was kindly sponsored by Konecranes, the Port of Gdańsk Authority and Visy Oy.

Presentations are available here. (You must be logged in to watch or download files from Conference)

Source: Camilla Strümpel