Port of Hamburg achieves 4.1 per cent growth in cargo throughput in 1H2019

Germany’s Port of Hamburg achieved a 4.1 per cent advance to 69.4 million tonnes in seaborne cargo handling in the first half of 2019, Port of Hamburg Marketing said in a recent press release.

Especially good growth trend in the general cargo segment, up 6.1 per cent at 48.4 million tonnes, was the main contributor to the resulting figures for total and container handling.

The total for bulk cargo handling was just 0.3 per cent lower than for last year’s first half at 21 million tonnes.

The 7.5 per cent increase in container handling to 4.7 million TEUs is primarily attributable to the four new liner services that have linked the Hanseatic City with ports in the United States, Canada, and Mexico since the start of the year.

The 283,000 TEUs handled in Hamburg on container services with the US since the beginning of the year took the US into second place among Hamburg’s most important partners for container services.

The Port of Hamburg is now directly linked by a total of 14 liner services with 29 ports in the US, Mexico, and Canada.
During the first half, the total number of container vessels calling Hamburg also rose. The total of 3,046 containerships berthing in the Port of Hamburg represented an increase of 3.7 per cent.

Among these were 89 ultra-large container carriers or 36.9 per cent more, with a slot capacity of 18,000 TEUs and over.

For the second half of the year, against a background of repercussions on world seaborne trade that is influenced by the current trade and currency disputes between the US and China, Port of Hamburg Marketing’s Joint CEOs Axel Mattern and Ingo Egloff anticipate total growth of four per cent in seaborne cargo throughput, and one of between five and six per cent on container handling.