Early on in its history, the favourable location of the “Three River City” was already taken advantage of for trade on the Inn and Danube rivers. The first ship pier, the “Passauer Lände” landing area is located in the historic part of the city.

In 1900, as a result of the growth in  freight transport, it was decided to build a winter port, or a port of refuge as it was referred to at the time. To this end the Racklau Island was joined to the right bank of the River Danube via an upward slanting dam 1068 metres in length, built facing against the current. A 667-metre long quay wall, rail and road access turned the former island into a full-scale port.

Passau-Racklau saw the launch of the most easterly German inland port in the winter of 1902 / 03.

The shipping of road-going units necessitated the building of roll-on/roll-off facilities in Passau in the 1980s. In 1983, construction of the ro-ro facilities began in Schalding about 5 km north-west of Racklau.

As a result of its location upstream from the the Kachlet weir, almost constant water levels could be maintained, facilitating year-round navigability at full draft. For Passau the start of ro-ro transport meant a huge boost for cargo handling.

Surveys and research conducted among freight forwarding and cargo handling companies in the Passau region demonstrated that there was sufficient potential in this sector for a high volume of shipping-related traffic. However, using Passau-Racklau as a sustainable trimodal port was not possible at this location because it was only free from flooding to a limited extent and also because of the absence of a rail link despite its proximity to the city centre.

For this reason, the operator of the location, Bayernhafen GmbH & Co. KG, decided to expand the Passau-Schalding location, bit by bit turning it into a high-performance, demand-based trimodal port location complete with cargo handling and storage facilities.    

In the initial construction phase, a vertical cargo handling embankment of roughly 450 metres in length was built downstream from the existing ro-ro facilities and the mobile port crane that was already in use was relocated here. In order to efficiently link the various modes of transport, the cargo handling embankment was equipped with rail track installed in such a way that they could be driven over.  

In order to extend the handling possibilities, depending on the respective volume, further mobile handling equipment was used as required and in a timely manner, equipped with various load handling devices for specific goods. Additionally, to meet the increasing demands made on rail, an extra siding, the length of a block train, was integrated into the port facilities.

In addition to these measures, further cargo handling and storage facilities that could be implemented successively and on-demand had already been planned in advance to cope with increased use of the port. In the process, the conditions for obtaining planning permission to upgrade the port were already met.

On 27 June 2008, bayernhafen Passau-Schalding opened.