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Hamburger Hafen Und Logistik AG (HHLA) has continued to increase its throughput, revenue and profit significantly against 2016.
In the first nine months of 2017, its container throughput increased by 10.8% to nearly 5.45m teu while revenue and profit also increased over 2016.
The chair of HHLA’s executive board, Angela Tizrath, said: “HHLA is currently benefiting from the positive trend in both the global economy and world trade, but also from the targeted sales activities and in-depth discussions with our customers which took place in the spring of this year and by which we secured – and in some cases expanded – our market position.”
“We believe that we will achieve the targets forecast for 2017. Although the results are very pleasing, we continue to operate in a challenging market environment. Uncertainty remains in the form of the volatile trend in international trade, which has prompted a structural slowdown in growth over recent years and in the conditions at the Port of Hamburg. We are still waiting for work to commence on the dredging of the river Elbe.”
The port has long been trying to dredge the river Elbe but has been held up by court challenges from environmentalists concerned about the alleged ecological impact of dredging works.
Although HHLA also operates a Ukrainian terminal in Odessa, the vast majority of its throughput is handled at its three Hamburg terminals.
The Port of Hamburg suffered in 2015 from declining trade with Russia and China in particular, two of its biggest trading partners.
In 2016, this trade stabilised or grew slowly but in 2017 it has significantly recovered, leading to the throughput increase.
Throughput on the high-volume Asian routes was up 17.3% and trade with Baltic seaports (including Russia) increased by 17.9%.