Quartiersleute

With the new edition of the “Port of Hamburg Handbook 2013”, Port of Hamburg Marketing provides an insight into the variety and range of services of the Port of Hamburg. In various articles the new issue provides port customers and all those with an interest in the Port of Hamburg useful information in German and English on the range of services of the mainly small and medium-sized firms, or Mittelstand that constitute the bulk of all businesses in the port, and of partner ports in the region.

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.

Volatile freight and charter rates, high fuel prices, unemployed vessels and the problems of ship financing are leading to structural change in coastal and inland waterway shipping. Experts are agreed on that. Yet what does this actually mean for the future of the shortsea, feeder and inland waterway ship trades? And how can companies prepare for the transition?

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.

In the newly published 2012 edition of the Port of Hamburg Handbook, Port of Ham-burg Marketing again presents an overview of the port’s capabilities on a total of 136 pages. The current edition, published in both German and English, provides business partners and friends of the Port of Hamburg with interesting and useful information about the wide range of efficient services offered by what are mainly SMEs operating in Hamburg’s seaport-related industries and in the partner ports within the region.