End of decline in sight for Hamburg

In the first half of 2009, the port handled a total of 54.2m tonnes of cargo, representing a drop of 23.7% compared to the same period last year.

Analysis of the major cargo segments shows that general cargo, which makes up a particularly large share of the port’s volume, declined sharply by 27.8%. With general cargo accounting for around 97% of containerised goods this affected container throughput with a total of 3.6m teus being handled, a 28.7% decrease on the first half of 2008, which was unaffected by the second-half slump in worldwide cargo.

In the first half of 2009 Asian trade fell well behind the levels reached previously and Asian containers only reached 2.1m teus (-25.1%). In comparison, container movement to West Africa grew by 7.5% to 27,000 teus, along with traffic to and from India and Pakistan, which were about 5% lower at 131,000 teus.