[ Intemodal Port of Hamburg: Environment-friendly a... ]

Intemodal Port of Hamburg: Environment-friendly and Future-orientd

Intermodal raffic booming in Hamburg

Hamburg is the hub of traffic for North-West Europe.
This is the place where the maritime waterway of the Lower Elbe meets
the international inland waterway of the Upper Elbe and Elbe Lateral C
anal(just east of Hamburg near Geestecht). This is a focal point of G
erman and international rail traffic-virtually all of Scandinavia’s r
ail traffic crosses the Elbe in Hamburg. And this is the intersection
of the pan-European highways E3 and E4 which link Hamburg to Europe’s
motorway network. Hundreds and forwarders and carriers offer reliabl
e and regular distribution services to every corner of Europe-on a jus
t-in-time basis.
In 1996 intermodal container traffic brought some 700,000 TEUs of turn
over to the Port of Hamburg. Almost 20% of this total was accounted fo
r by private-sector operators in which Hamburg port companies play a d
ecisive role. Hamburg is Europe’s most important rail container handl
ing centre. Hamburg is also the market leader in block train traffic t
o and from Central and Eastern Europe, 70% of all containers which hav
e to transported more than 150 km to or from the Port are carriee by r
ail-a high proportion that has earned Hamburg the title of the ‘most
environment-friendly overseas port.”
Some 200 block trains a week link the Port of Hamburg with all the key
international economic centres in Switzerland, Austria, Hungry, the C
zech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungry, Russia, etc.
More than 250 block trains a weekly ensure fast links between the Port
of Hamburg and Germany’s major economic centres, mainly of them over
night services. There are daily departures to Warsaw, Prague, Budapes
t, Vienna and Bazel- to name just a few destinations. These direct rai
l connections with their schedules edparture times take cargoes to cus
tomers safely, reliably and just in time.
In 1996 more than a million freight cars were moved on and 21.9m t of
cargo carried by Hamburg’s Port Railway. Every weekly an average of
165 trains with some 4,400 freight cars are handled on their way to or
from the Port of Hamburg. In the first nine months of 1997 the total
cargo turnover was 17.3m t, 6.5% up on the same period last year. Th
e Port Railway has a 30.5% share of Hamburg’s seaborne cargo turnover
-considerably more than in competing ports.
This year there have also been considerable increases in incoming carg
oes of fertilizers and outgoing cargoes of iron ore and petroleum prod
ucts. Container traffic, which accounts for more than a third of the P
ort Railway’s total turnover, rose by 5.3% to 534,200 TEUs. The volum
e of cargo handled rose significantly faster(26%) to reach 8.35m t.
All the combined cargo service providers have been equally involved in
this growth of cargo turnover: Transfracht International, Intercontai
ner-Interfrigo with HHLA as its on-the-spot partner, POLZUG, EUROKOMBI
, Metrans, Komblverkehr and Projekt-zug. Together, they managed to at
tract one in four of the containers handled to their rail services(wit
h DB Cargo merely serving as a trucker).
The EUROKAI subsidiary EUROKOMBI carried some 36,000 TEUs of cargo in
1996 while the HHLA subsidiaries HHCE, Metrans and POLZUG each had aro
und 30,000. Each of these operators is expecting about 10% growth for
1997, above all as a result of extensions to their services. For examp
le, POLZUG intends to introduce block-train services to St. Petersburg
, EUROKOMBI departures to Italy, etc.
Rail is only one carrier in the Port’s intermodal pre-and post-carria
ge mix. For example, Hamburg leads its competitors in the North Range
with 8-10 feeder ship sailings a day to destinations on the North Sea
or Baltic.
In 1996 9.2m t of cargo were carried by inlandwaterway vessel. Here,
too, there are indications of growth in 1997, especially in container
transports.