To face international competition together, the Port of Hamburg practises close cooperation with ports along the Lower Elbe as well as the North Sea and the Baltic. The aim is optimal exploitation of their favourable location, between the North Sea and the Baltic, in terms of transport geography, and to position Northern Germany even more strongly as a port region with joint interests and its own identity. Current cooperative measures include regular exchange between port authorities of data and knowhow on port planning and development, close consultation on industrial settlement and allocation of land, as well as joint marketing designed to highlight the actual locational advantages of the ports involved.
The Port of Hamburg is currently linked with the German inland waterway network via the Elbe Lateral Canal and the Mittellandkanal. Inland ports are obviously potentially high-performance hinterland traffic hubs, especially for the anticipated growth in container traffic in the medium term. Most of them are trimodally linked, with rail, waterway and autobahn networks. They handle regular services in bulk and general cargoes, containers and heavy loads. Close cooperation between the inland ports creates great potential for developing and sustaining multimodal seaport hinterland traffic.
Cross-border interchange with partners is an essential element of any international knowledge and technology transfer. An exchange of experience on infrastructure projects, market-relevant trends, innovative IT solutions and much else enables the partner ports to learn from one another and to strengthen economic ties between the two countries involved. Hamburg’s first official port partnership, with the Port of Yokohama in Japan, was inaugurated back in 1992.