Page 23 - Port Of Hamburg Magazine 01.2018

nally ended. Since the mid-1980s, museum ship ‘Cap San Diego’ at the St. Pauli Landing Stages has supplied the evidence. In 1990, the Port of Hamburg for the first time handled around two million TEUs. China’s return to the world economy since the 1980s and the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 made Hamburg the leading se- aport for Central Europe.
Using state-of-the-art technology, political leaders and port businesses exploited the opportunities that new- style world trade offered their city. In 2002, HHLA’s Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) entered service, a facility that at the time was more extensively auto- mated than any other container terminal in the world. In addition, HHLA expanded Tollerort to become Hamburg’s fourth container ter-
minal was initially envisaged. Owing to the crisis on world financial markets, plans for this were not imple- mented. That now provides Hamburg with scope for new planning measures, quite possibly for establishing liner services on European middle-distance trades he- re.
Development of the right infrastructure is also critical because of the rapid growth in containership size in re- cent years. Vessels can meanwhile reach lengths of up to 400 metres, breadths of 60 metres and maximum drafts of 16.5 metres. Although it has not yet been possible to implement the planned, ninth deepening and widening of the Elbe fairway, shipping companies are sending their largest containerships up the Elbe.
minal. The Port Railway and the port’s IT systems were, and still are, being continuously up- graded, and inland links expan- ded. Despite all the rationalizati- on and modernization of handling, thanks to new job categories the number of jobs continued to in- crease – around 150,000 people from the Hamburg Metropolitan Region now work in and with the
Containers now
represent about
two-thirds of Port
of Hamburg’s total
These meanwhile have capaci- ties of more than 21,000 TEU and can load twenty times as much as the ‘Cap San Diego’ once did. That illustrates the port’s attractiveness in the in- ternational transport chain. As the logic behind liner services dictates, these latest ships may call Hamburg, but never fully loaded. For steadily growing
Containers now represent about two-thirds of the Port of Hamburg’s total throughput. The port depends a great deal on the steel box – as shown by the trend of the past ten years. Container throughput has mean- while stagnated at under ten million TEU. There are many reasons for this. Political and economic factors have brought changes in world trade flows. That has recently particularly affected trade with China and Rus- sia, the Port of Hamburg’s most important partner countries. In recent years, new terminals have been built on the North Sea at Wilhelmshaven and on the Baltic at Gdansk. Rotterdam and Antwerp also offer new facilities. That has caused surplus capacities and increasingly tough competition. After years of percen- tage growth in the 2000s, nowhere in Europe had the port industry reckoned on such a downturn in contai- ner transport growth rates. Another of the reasons is that anything that can be transported in boxes will al- ready be found in them. The ‘containerization’ process is largely over now.
Yet container terminals require a great deal of space. Infrastructure renewal, which can take years, requires political far-sightedness and commercial flair – and ulti- mately, also luck. In the next few years, new terminals and possibly new industrial plants will be built in the central Steinwerder area of the Port of Hamburg. Du- ring the past decade an additional, fifth container ter-
port.
containerships, the Elbe must for nautical reasons on- ce again be widened and deepened in places. After a long period of planning and arguments before the courts, construction work can presumably start at the end of this year. Adjustment of the Elbe will play its part in the Port of Hamburg remaining successful in global container transport over the next 50 years. ■
throughput
50 YEARS OF CONTAINERS IN HAMBURG ■
THE AUTHOR
Journalist and non-fiction writer Olaf Preuss, economics correspondent on ‘Die Welt’ and ‘Die Welt am Sonntag’ newspapers in Hamburg, has reported on the maritime sector for many years. His book ‘A Box Conquers the World – Eine Kiste erobert die Welt’ (German – 2007) – told the story of the shipping container from the German viewpoint, while ‘Port of Hamburg – Hamburger Hafen’ (German – 2016) – is a compact portrait of Germany’s largest seaport.
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© Olaf Preuß