The dirty dozen and the Port of Hamburg
Like other ports of the Northern Europe range, the Port of Hamburg's first six months of the year were hit by the impact of the corona crisis. Total seaborne cargoes were at 61.2 million t, down by 12%. In the container handling segment, the throughput of 4.1 million teu reflected a downturn of 12.4% in comparison with the same period of the previous year.
General cargo handling was 12.2% lower at 42.5 million t, bulk cargo handling 11.7% down at 18.7 million t. This went beyond the losses of e.g. the Port of Rotterdam that suffered a setback of 9.1% in total throughput in H1/2020, yet in the Dutch port, the container streams only lost about 3.3% compared to H1/2019.
Nevertheless, Axel Mattern, joint CEO, Port of Hamburg marketing, blamed the pandemic as the main obstacle: “We are naturally not pleased about this trend, but the drop in first-half throughput caused by the pandemic seriously affected all ports in Northern Europe.”
At 33.7 million t, imports were 16.3% lower in the first six months and considerably weaker than exports totalling 27.5 million t (-6.1%). (mw)