The Port of Helsinki officially opened the new cargo port at Vuosaari, Helsinki on 28 November 2008, which Ramboll helped realise. Finland’s new main port offers efficient transport with frequent shipping services to Central European ports as well as direct connections to the entire Finnish main road and railway network.
Improved living conditions in Helsinki
The new location of the main port eases the traffic of downtown Helsinki significantly by transferring the heavy traffic to Vuosaari. It is estimated that the harbour road will be used by approximately 10,000 vehicles a day. At the same time former port areas Jätkäsaari and Sompasaari in Helsinki centre will be released for housing and business premises.
While being a unique project both in size and scale in the history of Finnish port engineering, Vuosaari harbour is also one of the few entirely new port constructions in the world. The harbour centre comprises a gate area, closed harbour area, adjacent Harbour Business Park and Meriportti Business Park.
A mammoth port project
The huge six-year project with a total cost of 682.1 million Euros employed about 100 engineers from Ramboll in Finland. Our experts were involved in a large number of planning tasks for eg traffic and land structure engineering as well as environmental impact assessment and ground surveys.
The harbour construction works were not spared from surprises either. Probably the most pleasant surprise was the finding of a mammoth bone during dredging of the fairway in autumn 2005. The bone was sent for further study to the Finnish Museum of Natural History, which operates under the University of Helsinki. The rare find was later donated to the Finnish Museum of Natural History.
The project was conducted by the Port of Helsinki in cooperation with the Finnish Maritime Administration, the Finnish Rail Administration and the Finnish Road Administration. The harbour's cornerstone was laid on 7 January 2003.