Volumes rise again at Hamburg

Hamburg further strengthened its status as the most important container port for the Baltic Sea region, with transhipment volumes for Baltic states rising 11.7% to a record 2.7m teu. Five of the Port’s top ten trading partners border the Baltic Sea: the Russian Federation, ranked third with 730,000 teu, Finland (fourth, 502,000 teu), Sweden (fifth, 390,000 teu) and Poland (seventh, 325,000 teu).

The transportation network to and from the seaport – by road, train, feeder ship and inland waterway – has seen Hamburg grow in importance as a northern European transport hub. With the Hamburg Port Railway handling a transport volume of more than 1.8m teu annually, Hamburg is Europe’s largest railway hub for container traffic.

China remains the Port’s biggest customer overall, with 3.2m teu in trade last year (+23%), followed by Singapore with 749,000 teu. Traffic to East Asia and Southeast Asia continued to grow, up 16.5% (3.9m teu) and 12.2% (1.0m teu) respectively. Trade with India grew particularly quickly, amounting to 150,000 teu, an increase of 48% year-on-year.