Hamburg steady in H1 2016

News 17 Aug 2016 by WCN Editorial

At 70.2 Mt, overall tonnage was down just 0.9% year-on-year in Germany’s biggest sea port

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In unit terms, container traffic fell by 1.2% to 4.5M TEU, although the decline occasioned by Russian sanctions and the downturn in the Chinese economy now seems to have bottomed out.

"The collapse in container traffic with China and Russia reported for last year has been almost completely halted," states the Port of Hamburg. "Despite the continuance of foreign trade sanctions, for instance, 216,000 TEU were transported between the Port of Hamburg and Russia [in H1 2016], representing a 2.3% increase. Container traffic with China also developed more steadily, being just 1% below the previous year’s figure at 1.3M TEU.

"The main explanation for the 1.2% fall in total container throughput was the downturn in transhipment services with ports in Poland and Sweden that handled calls from a larger number of direct container services. The downturn in H1 2016 container handling amounted to 5.6% with Scandinavia, and to 5.7% with Poland and the Baltic states.

Axel Mattern, joint CEO of Port of Hamburg Marketing, also emphasised Hamburg's strong credentials and performance as a rail port. "We have established that in the first half of 2016, the quantity of freight transported ecologically by rail reached 23.8 Mt, representing a real increase advance of 3.9% Hamburg is further extending its position as the largest rail port in Europe.”

The rail figure includes 1.2M TEU of container traffic (+ 2.1%). Allowing for the fact that transhipment containers are counted twice, the intermodal rail share of Hamburg's imp/ex container traffic is around 35%.