Port Services

The Port of Hamburg has reason to look to the future with optimism. At 32.8 million tons, total seaborne cargo throughput for the first three months of 2013 put the Port of Hamburg back on a growth course. The trend in bulk cargo handling, especially, fuelled the increase in seaborne cargo handling: In the first quarter of the year a total of 10.1 million tons of bulk cargoes were handled in Hamburg, corresponding to an increase of 6.3 percent.

The Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Deutsche Telekom, and SAP are jointly starting a logistics IT solution designed to link up port-based companies, partners, and customers more closely. The "Smart Port Logistics" pilot project has resulted in a comprehensive IT platform that incorporates mobile applications, or "apps", and thus makes it possible for traffic information and port-related services to be accessed from mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.

In the first six months of 2012 the Port of Hamburg reported total throughput of 65.8 million tons (up 2.7 percent). At 45 million tons or 4.4 million TEU (20-ft standard containers), the container throughput that predominates in Hamburg as a universal port achieved a gain of 1.9 percent. The reason for this relatively modest growth was the total for empty containers, whereas throughput of loaded containers grew up by 4.7 percent to 3.8 million TEU. Weaker growth rates compared to the 2011 first half are explained by the unusually strong growth achieved at that time.