Page 22 - Port Of Hamburg Magazine 01.2018

■ 50 YEARS OF CONTAINERS IN HAMBURG
THE CONTAINER IS A GUARANTEE THAT HAMBURG PLAYS A KEY ROLL IN WORLD TRADE
22 | Port of Hamburg Magazine | March 2018
Hamburg’s port and the container
The “American Lancer” berthed at HHLA’s Burchardkai on 31 May 1968. She was not the first cargo ship to reach the Port of Hamburg with containers on board – but the first container-only ship. That day is rightly seen as historic for Germany’s largest seaport. The container has more decisively shaped the Port of Hamburg ever since, overturning all previous technologies. It was the container that essentially led to Hamburg becoming a central world trade hub in the late Twentieth Century – and remaining one of the world’s top ports to this day.
Introduction of the standardized sea container was a new departure for sea transport and world trade gene- rally as the arrival of 3D-printing is proving today for in- dustrial production. Yet whereas the advantages of three-dimensional, computer-controlled manufacture are apparent immediately, in shipping and the port in- dustry the container met massive rejection, even in Germany, even in Hamburg. US forwarder Malcolm McLean had brought the first containership into ser- vice in 1956. In the USA, the system gradually became established by the mid-1960s. Yet scepticism persis- ted in shipping and port industries so widely hide- bound by tradition. Shipowners and ports operators fe- ared gigantic bad investments in the transfer from traditional general cargo vessels to containerships. Do- ckers and their unions believed that the new steel box would do away with thousands of jobs. They, in parti- cular, organized massive resistance to the container.
Two personalities contributed crucially to the introduc- tion of the new transport system in the Port of Ham- burg by the end of the 1960s. Helmuth Kern, a mem- ber of the governing SPD and Hamburg Minister of
Economics, later head of HHLA, persuaded the govern- ment that the port needed to be revamped for the con- tainer. As a start, he had Burchardkai re-equipped as a container terminal. He also played a vital part in attrac- ting container liner services via Hamburg from interna- tional shipping companies. During years of negotia- tions, entrepreneur Kurt Eckelmann, for his part, doggedly persuaded the City of Hamburg to release the land essential for building Eurokai as Hamburg’s se- cond big container terminal. This went up opposite Burchardkai in Waltershof docks. With its fleet of bar- ges and range of marine services, the Eckelmann fami- ly business was one of the Port of Hamburg’s leading firms. At international conferences Eckelmann, who knew McLean, also contributed to standardization of container sizes. With Eurokai, he laid the foundation for Eurogate, now one of Europe’s leading container termi- nal operators.
Hamburg’s entry into the container business rapidly paid off. At the beginning of the 1980s, the port reached the landmark of one million container units (TEU) handled. The era of the general cargo vessel fi-
© Andreas Vallbracht