Port of Hamburg Striking Growth in First Three Quarters

For Germany’s largest universal port, seaborne cargo handling in the first nine months of 2019 proved highly satisfactory. The growth trend evident since the beginning of the year was maintained. With seaborne cargo throughput up 3.2 percent at 104 million tons, growth in Hamburg clearly exceeded the figures from its major competing ports in Northern Europe. These reported an advance averaging one percent. Container handling at seven million TEU 20-ft standard containers - was up by 6.9 percent. 

Here again, Hamburg regained market share up of 0.7 percentage points in competition with other major container ports, whose growth averaged 3.4 percent. The excellent container handling trend in the rail segment also boosted seaport-hinterland services. Transporting 2.1 million TEU in the first nine months, these attained 11.9 percent growth. At 31.6 million tons - down 2.1 percent - bulk cargo throughput was slightly below last year’s. 

The 6.9 percent climb in container handling to 7.0 million TEU is primarily attributable to the four new transatlantic services, plus four new 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. 

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