Growth in bulk cargo throughput was maintained. In this important handling segment, total volume of 45.5 million tons represented growth of 5.8 percent on the previous year. The Port of Hamburg reports around 30 percent local container cargo as well as growing seaport-hinterland container transport by rail, up by 2.8 percent, and by inland waterway vessels, up by 27.5 percent. Downturn in seaborne container
throughput is primarily attributable to lower volumes handled with China, Russia and Poland. In total, in 2015 something over 800,000 containers (TEU) fewer than in the previous year were handled for these especially important trading partners in container traffic with the Port of Hamburg.
“Among the ports of Northern Europe, the Port of Hamburg has maintained its strong position on container traffic with the Baltic region. Compared to ports such as Antwerp and Rotterdam, Hamburg reports an around seven percentage points higher proportion of transhipment cargo,” explained Axel Mattern, Member of the Port of Hamburg Marketing Executive Board. “This is one of the reasons that Hamburg is more seriously affected than Antwerp or Rotterdam by weakness in China’s foreign trade and Russia’s economic problems, for example,” added Mattern. A large
share of the cargoes handled in Hamburg for China and Russia is transhipped via Hamburg, and loaded from oceangoing containerships on to feederships.
“Container traffic with China down by 14.4 percent and with Russia by 34.4 percent could not be offset in volume by growth in container traffic with other countries such as Malaysia, India, the United Arab Emirates or Mexico. Since the statistics for worldwide transhipment traffic feature the waterside transfer from the large container ship to the feeder or vice versa each time this occurs, any transhipment downturn doubly affects port results,” explained Mattern. The fall in seaborne container traffic with Polish ports has also been caused by direct calls by liner
container services calling Gdansk direct without transhipment at one of the North Range ports. “Such direct calls are always one alternative for shipowners to the transhipment traffic on which the majority of them nevertheless serve such hub ports as Hamburg, for example,” said Mattern. Essential for any direct calls are availability of sufficient cargo and ports equipped for handling
mega-containerships.