Cruise vessel AIDAcara launches the beginning of Port of Kiel’s cruise season for 2019. Dr Dirk Claus, the port’s Managing Director commented that the upcoming cruise season will be very exciting and they will welcome a lot of new ships to Kiel. The second and new terminal building at the Ostseekai is presently under construction and they are working on the implementation of the onshore power project.
Mainly, the port is investing approximately 30 million euros in the cruise sector. The half of the amount is for sustainability measures. Therefore, the construction of the commercial port’s first onshore power supply plant at the Norwegenkai Terminal is on the finishing straight. The facility will be inaugurated this spring.
Moreover, Ostseekai Cruise Terminal and the Schwedenkai Ferry Terminal will both be equipped with onshore power supply plants as well next year. This innovative project has been tendered just recently.
As Dirk Claus commented
We expect to supply 70 to 80 cruise vessels with onshore power at the Ostseekai Terminal during the first full operating year. This represents half of the overall cruise calls at our city terminals.
The Port of Kiel expects many highlights this season and a record in terms of tonnage. The new vessel ‘Mein Schiff 2’ has already been handed to the shipping company TUI Cruises at the Ostseekai at the beginning of 2019. In the meantime, six additional calls are envisaged for the season.
The port will have new vessels visiting this year, such as “Nieuw Statendam” of Holland America Line, the “AIDAprima” as well as the expedition ship “World Explorer”.
The most frequent guests will be the vessels of the shipping companies of AIDA, TUI Cruises, MSC and Costa that use Kiel for passenger turnaround.
According to Dirk Claus, the peak of the season will be on 17th August when in addition to the large ferries to Scandinavia there will be no less than four ocean-going cruise vessels in port at the same time, namely the ‘AIDAprima’, the ‘AIDAluna’, the ‘Vasco da Gama’ and the ‘MSC Meraviglia’.
Overall, 179 visits by 33 cruise vessels have been registered in Kiel for 2019. The tonnage rises to more than 15 million GT (2018: 11.5 million GT) and the number of passengers is expected to clearly exceed 600,000.
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In order to continue to offer first-class service to the ever growing number of passengers also in the future, a second modern terminal building is currently under construction at the Ostseekai, which abuts the northern side of the existing terminal building.
The works began on October 2018 and will continue on until summer 2019. Additionally, the check-in service at Berth 28 will take place using a tentsystem which is currently being assembled. As the con-struction works at the new building progresses, the gangway will connect the northern berth to the existing terminal again.
The new terminal will begin operations in the middle of the season. The winter months were also leveraged to extend the scour protection and to establish a consistent water depth at the Ostseekai berths.
Furthermore, the sheet piling wall of Berth 28 will receive a coating in the area of fluctuating water levels, a concrete beam will be inserted and the fenders will be revised. At Ostuferhafen, the port apron is being expanded in the meantime and Shed 7 will be integrated into the passenger handling processes for ‘MSC Meraviglia’ as of 27th April.
The area’s sea tourism increases its economic importance for the State Capital City of Schleswig-Holstein. More than 2.2 million passengers are expected to board or leave a ferry or cruise vessel in the port of Kiel this year.
Mr Claus stated that the port is strengthening its position as one of the leading ports of origin and destination. In the meantime, international guests will be able to visit more often the port.
According to the recently published study, passengers already generated a turnover of about 68 million euros in Kiel in 2017. The total consumer spending of the ferry passengers of the port of Kiel amounts to more than 53 million euros.
Another 15 million euros are added to that by cruise passengers’ and crews’ expenditure. More than 100,000 overnight stays in local hotels are booked by passengers for the time right before or after their cruise. The average consumer spending of one passenger beginning his or her cruise in Kiel amounts to about 48 euros. About half of the daytime visitors arriving in Kiel by cruise ship go on organised shore excursions, another 40% make individual excursions. In addition to the excursion costs, every stop-over passenger spends 20 euros on aver-age in the region.
In 2018, an emission measurement study took place at the port of Kiel. The study began on April 2018 until the end of the year.
The report shows that the vessel emissions are scarcely detectable and merge into the background pollution levels. During the cruise season the emis-sion values are even lower than those detected during the winter months where there are no cruise ships in port. All regulatory threshold values are complied with at all times.
… Dirk Claus highlighted.
At the two points of measurement on “Hegewischstraße” and at the University of Applied Sciences Kiel particulate matter PM10 was sampled on a daily basis by means of a reference method and was then gravimetrically analysed.
