Container traffic down at Port of Rotterdam

Of the three categories within the container sector, deepsea containers fell by 2.5% as a result of a reduction in ship’s capacity on a number of services between Asia and Europe. This also had an impact on feeder volume, which was 9.9% down, partly due to the transfer of some feeder services to German ports.

On the other hand, however, short sea traffic increased by 12.7%, mainly with Scandinavia, Russia and the Baltic, as a result of the economic growth in that part of Europe. Ro-ro volumes also increased by 2.8% thatnks to slight improvement in the British economy.

Other general cargo was down 23.1% on 2012. Incoming trade in slabs (semi-manufactured steel products) came to a halt and the handling of other steel products is suffering as a consequence of the weak European market. The decline in the breakbulk sector as a whole was 3.9%.