Australia's Babcock & Brown Infrastructure (BBI) has acquired two Finnish concession port operators in what is its fifth European concessional port acquisition this year.

UPM-Kymmene, the world's leading magazine paper-maker, sold Oy Rauma Stevedoring and Oy Botnia Shipping to the Babcock and Brown unit for $130 million.

UPM said the sale was crucial to its strategy to divest non-core businesses.

BBI on the other hand, indicated that the acquisition is a “strategic link” in its Baltic Sea transport corridor, which it said was seeing “higher than average” growth compared to the rest of Europe.

“The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy and Transport forecasts that future demand of maritime transport in the Baltic Sea region to 2020 will be  +83% on intra Baltic trade and +59% on external trade,” BBI said.

The operational concession for Oy Rauma Stevedoring and Oy Botnia Shipping at the Finnish ports of Rauma and Botnia respectively will run till 2037.

“Both ports have sufficient deep water to enable handy and panamax class vessels to use the facilities and both have ample capacity to expand volumes,” BBI said.

Together both ports handle in excess of seven million tonnes per year, representing a market share of over 10% of Finland's maritime trade.

Rauma is the third largest container terminal in Finland and the largest paper export port for the country.

BBI's Finnish acquisitions have come very rapidly on the back of four other European concessional port acquisitions this year.

BBI had in August acquired a majority stake in Italian concession port operator Terminal Rinfuse Italia S.p.A (TRI).

TRI currently runs operations in the ports of Genoa, Savona (Vado) and Venice with the length of the current concessions ranging from 13-18 years.

In the previous month of July BBI also purchased a majority stake in Belgian port operator Manuport Group.

BBI's other two European concessional port acquisitions are a 51% stake in Spain's TPS Tarragona Port Services S.L. and a 51% stake in Belgium's Water Container Transport.