Consistent market orientation safeguards growth opportunies

This year Hamburg’s port economy once again proved its ability to
adapt to structual changes in a market-oriented manner. A comparison
of the four major universal ports on the North European Continent
where the economic factors described above had a similar impact shows
that Hamburg enjoyed an above-average year.
Such seccess is no coincidence. Hamburg’s port operators have known
how to create strong customer ties through efficiency,
competitiveness and a constant willingness to meet growing demands.
Constant and consistent improvements to organizational structures
combined with increasing specialization and grouping of companies
have strengthened Hamburg’s port economy. Changes in corporate
structures have unleashed synergy effects with a concentration of
resources leading to higher productively and increased attractiveness
of the services offered.
The technical operative capability of Hamburg’s port operators has
been further enhanced through extensive investment. Considerable
improvements are becoming apparent in data communications at the
inter-company and port levels. An initiative by the Port of Hamburg
’s leading container-handling companies will lead to the launch of a
“Paperless Port” pilot project in mid-1997. The aim is to make the
handling of containers a paperless business. At the same time,
customs controls on export containers will be automated with the
introduction of ZZPP(Customs Export Clearance in the Paperless Port).
This will replace the conventional, time-consuming control procedures
with a fast, paperless flow of data, and that will enable goods to
flow faster too. Furthermore, the successful policy of optimizing
hinterland container traffic through the use of block trains will be
continued. The market success of these block trains to Central and
Eastern Europe, an idea developed by Hamburg’s private-sector port
operators, is the starting point of for further considerations of
what creative solutions can safeguard and gain market shares in
hinterland rail traffic.
The entrepreneurial achievements of Hamburg’s private-sector port
operators would have been inconceivable without a reliable port
development policy and the neessary investment by the City-State of
Hamburg. This is why Hamburg’s port operators welcome the
initiative of the City’s Economics Ministry to present, in 1997, an
updated Port Development Plan as the basis for future port policy
decisions. Safe planning is one precondition for successfully
maintaining a competitive position. The Port Development Plan sets
the points in precisely this way and is thus of enormous
significance.