by Marek Błuś and Przemysław Myszka

Who could imagine that break-bulk - once nicknamed by us the 'dinosaur' of cargo transportation - would make such a, well, breakthrough last year.

While its annual turnover rose in 2017, too, by a modest 2.7% year-on-year, it skyrocketed in 2018 by as much as 25.7%!

As a result, the market share of other general cargo handling technologies, ro-ro and containers, went down, despite that, first, general cargo carved more out of the region's total throughput, and, second, that more goods were packed like sardines in both trailers and boxes (tonnage- and units-wise), a whopping total of 26.87m Universal Cargo Units.

There's only one blot on this landscape, namely the stagnated numbers for passenger traffic in the Baltic.

Other than that, 2018 was a Mardi Gras for those employed in taking care of the region's general cargo traffic.

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