Stockholm Wins Third ESPO Award: Interview

The 2011 ESPO Award focussed on ‘Creative Strategies to Communicate the Port to the Wider Public.'

Seventeen submissions were received in total and three of the projects were shortlisted. Finally, on 9 November, the Ports of Stockholm came out as the winner of the third ESPO Award.

During the summer, GreenPort had already met with Gun Rudeberg who is General Counsel and Head of Environmental Affairs at the Ports of Stockholm. She joined the company in 1995 and is part of its Management Group. Mrs. Rudeberg deals mainly with the ports’ legal matters and environmental strategies. She previously worked as a lawyer in the cities of Stockholm and Nacka. Besides her function at the Port, she is the Chairman of the ESPO Sustainable Development Committee. Gun was born in 1954, in a small city 300 km south of Stockholm. She went to university in a city called Lund which is very close to Malmö-Copenhagen.

How did you get into the port sector?

It was a coincidence. I was working for the city of Stockholm since 1987 as a lawyer. And a few years later, in 1995, the Ports of Stockholm needed a lawyer and that’s how I was asked to work for them. I left the city because I wanted to have a new task, new challenges and for me it was the perfect time to leave. When you work for the city, you work together with many colleague-lawyers and I think it’s a challenge to work alone, not to have your colleagues very close to you so working at the port gave me the opportunity to see the practical solutions of using the law in the business, which is a big challenge. I must say, it wasn’t a direct choice to go to the maritime industry but I have never regretted my choice and if I had knew back at the time which experiences I would go through.

My youngest daughter is 21 years old and since a couple of summers she has been working as a stevedore in the lock of the port of Stockholm. Now she is studying economy at the university and the day she will finish her school and tells me that she wants to work in maritime industry, I would definitely recommend her to do so. The two oldest ones also worked a few summers in the port when they were students and enjoyed the work and experience.

One of the breakthroughs in my career is the fact that I could take care of environmental issues in the port. In the meantime I continued to be a lawyer for the port.

Meanwhile, the environmental questions became a natural part of everyone’s work in our port. Whenever people in the port talks about economy, quality or safety or anything else, then they should also take into account the environmental questions.

I’ve been involved in the project Norvikudden, with which we are planning to build a new port in Nynäshamn in Stockholm. The Ports of Stockholm have been working for many years on environmental questions and a project that has been really successful is the model for differentiation of port fees. This project started in 1998 and has been running for many years now. A lot of studies have shown that this project has had its effect as well and the reduction of SOx and NOx has been successful, especially for the regular liner traffic. One success factor for this result has been cooperation with the shipowners.

Beside the differentiation of port fees, there is also a lot of attention on waste handling and especially on the equipment we have built for receiving black and grey water. Today, in Stockholm at every quay we have reception facilities for receiving black and grey water and we are one of the very few in the world that can do this. Of course we have invested a lot of money onto this but we are very proud of it.

We also did (and are doing) a lot to adapt the ports to climate change. Ports of Stockholm built its first on-shorepower supply as early as 1996 and when we now develop new quays we are preparing for more. In addition to what is done for vessels we have done, for example, a lot to reduce our own use of electricity, we have done a lot to change the way we do the heating of the buildings in the port. We use geothermal and district heating which has a great positive impact on the environment. So we do a lot for the reduction of CO2, in our own buildings as well as in the buildings we rent to others.

Yes, we did apply with a project which is called ‘Port Vision 2015’. It’s a large project which has been running for many years and it’s about how to communicate and how to make stakeholders around the port, people and decision makers, understand the port and its work with environmental questions. In a big city, the ports always compete with other sectors and companies because there is a wish to use the land around the port for other causes, for buildings for example. This project shows at the same time how we open up parts of the port to the people. The Ports of Stockholm has land areas which are situated very close to the city and by opening this quay sides and by showing it to people we also make the port more accessible.

The Ports of Stockholm are the largest cruise port in Sweden, with 263 calls and 450 000 passengers last summer. Cruise tourism has been growing every single year. Although, some years we do have less calls but the ships are getting larger so the amount of passengers are growing. We see this trend of ships which are getting larger and larger and therefore we need to develop the port in order to receive those large ships. Together with these developments, environmental questions are being addressed because the increase of cruise tourism does not only have an impact on the city, but also on the locals and the environment.

The EU should, for example, create a level playing field in the whole of Europe. I believe that they are doing its hardest to achieve. If you look at the discussions about the sulphur content in marine fuel; there can be different rules for the Baltic and the south, which is a big issue and I hope it will be solved in some way.

I think it’s possible if ports collaborate in the same projects, participate in the same conferences and try to understand why these differences exist. Of course there is a cultural divergence but if people meet each other, they might succeed in understanding each other’s diversity. Thanks to my position as a chairman of the ESPO Sustainable Development Committee, I do get the chance to meet a lot of people from southern ports and then I take the time discuss with them in order to understand what is happening in their world.

I think it has changed a lot during the years. When I started to work in the port in 1995, I went to my first conference and we were two ladies amongst 150 men. That was very strange for me, but now we are more and more women in the sector. Since I’ve been working for the Ports of Stockholm, I never felt any difficulties in being a woman.

I would like to see the enlargement of the port in Nynäshamn to come through. The ports urban development project “the Royal SeaPort” is also a project we are working on together with the city. This project aims at giving back land to the city to built offices and homes with port operations alongside these buildings.

I live in the southern part of Stockholm and whenever I’m free I like to go to a good restaurant or a nice bar but one place that I like very much is to go on tour on the water on the lake of Mälaren, in Stockholm. There is boat traffic on the lake and it’s a fantastic place to be.

Besides spending time with my husband and family I like playing golf. It’s my favourite pastime. I’ve been doing this for 8 years and it’s a way for me to relax from work and to think about something else.

“Nothing less than a manual of best practice for port communication campaigns.”

This is how the jury motivated its unanimous decision to pick Ports of Stockholm as the winner of the third ESPO Award on Societal Integration of Ports. The Award was held at the Brussel's Town Hall in the presence of Commission Vice-President Siim Kallas, more than 200 representatives from the European port and logistics community and EU policy-makers.

The theme of this year’s competition was ‘Creative Strategies to Communicate the Port to the Wider Public’. Seventeen port authorities responded to the theme, with innovative and inspiring projects. The submissions of the ports of Koper, Stockholm and Thessaloniki were shortlisted in early September and it was Stockholm’s project ‘Port Vision 2015’ that charmed the jury most. ESPO Chairman Victor Schoenmakers announced the 2012 competition will focus on projects that connect ports to young people, either through education or work. And in 2013, the emphasis will be on the contemporary use and promotion of port heritage.

The ESPO Award on Societal Integration of Ports was established in 2009 to promote innovative projects of port authorities that improve societal integration of ports, especially with the city or wider community in which they are located. In this way, the Award wants to stimulate the sustainable development of European ports and their cities. Previous winners were the Port of Gijón (2009) and the Port of Helsinki (2010).