Hamburg hit by weak trade

The Port of Hamburg has announced a 9.3% year-on-year fall in its 2015 container handling volumes amid weak market conditions.

The port reported that its throughput went down from 9.7m teu in 2014 to 8.8m teu last year, falling to third-place in the European container ports rankings behind Rotterdam and Antwerp, which handled 12m teu and 9.6m teu respectively in 2015.

According to the port, the fall in seaborne container throughput is mainly attributable to the fall in volumes handled with China and Russia, as well as the decrease in container traffic with Polish ports, which was caused by a rising number of container services calling directly at Gdansk without transhipment at one of the northern ports.