Hamburg port 1st half volume drops 28%

Hamburg port handled a total of 3.6 million TEU in the first half of 2009. This corresponds to a decrease of 28.7 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.

However, the slump in cargo throughput had not yet begun in the first half of 2008, which brought Hamburg a volume of 5 million TEU and a growth rate of almost 4 percent. It was not until the second half of 2008 that the worldwide finance and economic crisis began to have massive effects on seagoing cargo transport.

China is by far the leading trade partner for the Port of Hamburg, and Asia? high cargo volumes make it an especially important region for Hamburg. In the first half of 2009, Asian trade fell well behind the levels reached over the previous year.

The number of containers transported to and from Asia reached a total of only 2.1 million TEU (down 25.1 percent). Hamburg is the leading container port for traffic to and from Asia and China. Since many of these containers are transhipped via Hamburg as an important feeder hub, particularly for the Baltic Sea region, the drop in this area had especially strong effects in connection with container volumes in short-sea transports.

However, analysis of the various relations also shows some positive trends in the first half of 2009. Container transport to West Africa, not one of the top ten trading partners for example, reached a volume of 27,000 TEU and a growth rate of 7.5 percent.

It is also worth mentioning that container traffic to and from India and Pakistan was only around five percent lower than in the previous year, making up 131,000 TEU.