Hamburg's comeback?
Besides a moderate downturn in bulk cargo handling, the port of Hamburg (Germany) looks back with pleasure on its cargo handling performance in the first nine months of 2019. At 104 million t, total throughput went up by 3.2%. Container handling in particular witnessed a clear uptick of 6.9%, reaching 7 million teu.
This surge is related to four new transatlantic services as well as four additional Baltic feeder services. Since the beginning of the year, the new transatlantic services operated by Hapag-Lloyd and ONE have connected Hamburg with ports in the USA, Canada and Mexico.
In the first three-quarters of the year, 439,000 teu were handled on container services with the USA, Hamburg’s second most important trading partner. That is 336,000 teu more than in the same period of the previous year. Looking at competitors of the Northern Europe range, Hamburg increased its market share by regaining up to 0.7 percentage points.
Furthermore, during the first three quarters, the number of calls by mega-containerships – with slot capacities of 18,000 teu and over – increased by 18.3% to 123. A total of 2.6 million teu were transhipped in Hamburg from oceangoing vessels to feeders, representing an advance of 4.3%. Transporting 4.4 million teu in the first nine months, landside seaport-hinterland services achieved 8.6% growth. (fd)