Niedersachsen Ports with positive surprises
Not all of Lower Saxony's nine sea ports saw a decline in cargo throughput in H1/2020, although total throughput dropped by 11%. All in all, the group of ports handled 24 million t of goods in H1/2020 (27 million t in 2019). Papenburg, Oldenburg and Stade however recorded a positive trend.
General cargo throughput amounted to about 2.95 million t (3.47 million t in H1/2019), which corresponds to a decrease of roughly 15%. In this segment, Covid-19 had but little impact on shipments of onshore and offshore fuels. Solid bulk cargo such as coal and building materials recorded a significant decline, dropping by 25% to 6.06 million t in H1/2020, while liquid bulk cargo achieved an increase of 3% (12.3 million t).
The transhipment of new vehicles through Lower Saxony's sea ports suffered the most and, at almost 555,000 vehicles, was nearly 39% below the level of the previous year (918,000 new vehicles in H1/2019). (mw)