45-year-old Kjartan Ross joined as director of the Port of Thyborøn in June with solid maritime experience, stemming from time as a ship's officer at Mærsk and MAN Diesel Turbo. At the latter in Frederikshavn, he worked as head of a department that retrofitted existing ships to reduce fuel consumption with a reduction percentage of up to 31 per cent.
However, he also has direct experience of port management from the Port of Aalborg, where he has been sales and marketing manager from 2018. In Aalborg, he built up his own department and worked to implement internationalization.
Although everything might suggest that Kjartan Ross grew up in a harbor town, he actually comes from Grindsted. But his father worked building power plants, so he grew up around the world. Kjartan Ross has therefore already lived in exciting places around the world during his upbringing, for example in Macau, from where he today fondly remembers going to school where there was cane.
Now he has landed in Thyborøn, from where the working week takes place, while the weekend is spent at home in Aalborg. But this now means that there is more time to work during the week. Both ambitions and visions for the port are also completely clear.
- What a port makes its money from is hinterland area. Here we have the advantage of being an east-facing port on the West Coast. This means we can build a port cheaper than other ports, because we don't have to build large piers, says Kjartan Ross and concludes:
- It is a crazy exciting port. We are sublimely situated in relation to future wind farms.
He is well aware of swirling rumors in the port world about cooperation between individual ports. But it is not something that is bet on.
- We want to be in control of what happens in our port, he asserts.
The need for more port capacity for offshore wind
Especially in relation to the green transition and offshore wind, some forecasts predict that there will be a need for increased port capacity.
- If we are to maintain the leading position we have today in Denmark, port facilities are needed. The ports must be developed, and perhaps some ports must have support for that development, explains Kjartan Ross.
He also sees a number of harbors as particularly suitable for offshore wind.
- There are a number of ports that are particularly suitable for us, in addition to Esbjerg, Rønne, Odense, Aalborg, Nakskov and Aabenraa. That's why Thyborøn needs to be on the field, says the port director and reports on the royal discipline in offshore wind:
- We are also looking at the possibility of shipping offshore wind.
The expansion of offshore wind in the world only goes one way with the green conversion and ever larger turbine elements. It also makes transport of the parts more and more difficult on the roads.
- At some point, there will be a few more production facilities at a port, because the parts will be so large. It would be interesting for us, because otherwise it moves production abroad. With a production, mill parts come over the quay. It is something that we have the potential for here, and it is a development opportunity for us, says Kjartan Ross.
To that extent, it would also have significance for the entire municipality.
- It would provide a lot of jobs. That was one of the reasons why I applied for the position, because the local angle makes it positive.
Train to the quayside
There is also another vision that makes a lot of sense. Today, there are already freight train tracks to Cheminova, which lies south of Thyborøn. And the port's development potential goes in the same direction.
- It is a matter of a few kilometers that could give us a freight terminal. We could become a transport hub for goods to Norway, says Kjartan Ross about another development opportunity for the port.
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