WASHINGTON: Hamburg has finally pulled out of the container slump, with Russian traffic up 2.3 percent at 216,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units despite the ongoing trade sanctions against the Kremlin as the German port’s overall traffic shrank by just 1.2 percent in the first half of the year compared with a 9 percent decline in 2015. The slight decline in first-half traffic was due to lower transshipment services with Polish and Swedish ports, down 5.7 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively, as they boosted the number of direct calls. Container traffic from China was down just 1 percent on the 1.3 million TEUs in the first half of 2015.
Europe’s third-largest container hub handled 4.5 million TEUs, marginally down on the year-earlier period, but a significant improvement on the 3.4 percent year-over-year decline in the first quarter to 2.2 million TEUs. The collapse in trade with China and Russia last year, which in 2015 cost Hamburg its No. 2 spot in the rankings of Europe’s top container ports, “has been almost completely halted,” the Port of Hamburg Marketing said.
Hamburg outperformed Rotterdam, Europe’s top container port, where traffic dipped 2.3 percent to 6.1 million TEUs, but continued to lag second-ranked Antwerp, where volume grew by 4.4 percent to 5.05 million TEUs. Total throughput at Germany’s largest port decreased by 0.9 percent to 70.2 million tons. “Seaborne cargo throughput … in the first half of the year may have been slightly lower, but the trend was noticeably more stable,” said Axel Mattern, joint CEO of Port of Hamburg Marketing. The first-half decline impacted earnings at HHLA, the largest terminal operator active in the port of Hamburg. Earnings before interest and tax fell to 66.9 million euros ($74.3 million) as revenue was down 2 percent year-over-year at 574 million euros.
