by Marek Błuś and Przemysław Myszka

Generally speaking, the region's port bulk market was flat last year. What was lost on the liquid side, was regained on the dry front.

That said, while the entire bulk segment advanced by 0.3% on the result from 2017, its share shrank by 2.15 percentage points in relation to the whole cargo throughput of the Baltic Sea region's seaport sector, all "thanks" to the development of the general cargo submarket, particularly break-bulk.

Consequently, liquid bulk is no more the most widely traded commodity in our part of the globe (though this might change as quickly as with 2019's end, the difference between it and general cargo was paper-thin last year).

On a year-on-year basis, Poland and Finland advanced the most, by double-digits, the former both in liquid and dry bulk turnover, the latter in dry. To the contrary, the handling of bulk in German Baltic seaports fell down considerably over the same period.

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