Port of Hamburg volumes up 1.7% in Q1

Throughput of bulk cargo at the German port rose 6.7 percent during the first quarter of 2017, while container cargo and general cargo slipped slightly.    Port of Hamburg’s first quarter total throughput was up 1.7 percent at 35.4 million tons, the port said Wednesday.
   The volume growth was slightly above the 1.6 percent average of the other major North Range ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Bremen/Bremerhaven.
   Containerized cargo dropped 0.7 percent to 2.2 million TEUs compared to the same period last year, as did general cargo, volumes of which dropped 0.7 percent to 23.1 million tons.
   Bulk cargo, on the other hand, grew 6.7 percent to 12.2 million tons, the best quarterly figure ever in Hamburg, with increased handling of coal, coke and ores as imports and grain and oil products as exports making a positive impact in the first quarter, said the port.
   “Despite the persisting non-implementation of the dredging of the fairway of the Lower and Outer Elbe, cargo still finds its way via Hamburg,” said Ingo Egloff, joint CEO of port marketing. “We find that while the number of loaded containers has risen slightly, handling of empty containers has declined. By contrast with the globally coordinated transport chains for boxes stuffed with import or export cargoes, empty containers are less linked to specific ports and routing is therefore more volatile,” said Egloff.
   Port of Hamburg handled 1.9 million TEUs in loaded containers for the quarter, an increase of 0.04 percent from first quarter 2016. Empty containers dropped 4.9 percent to 307,000 TEUs.
   On main trade routes, Port of Hamburg’s container traffic with Europe was up 0.6 percent at 663,000 TEUs, with the Americas up 6.4 percent at 311,000 TEUs and Australia/Pacific up 19.9 percent at 13,000 TEUs.
   Container trade with Africa and Asia, on the other hand, dropped 5.5 percent to 70,000 TEUs and 3 percent to 1.2 million TEUs, respectively.
   “Among our top three trading partners, China, Russia and the USA, only the first reported a slight downturn on the previous year,” said Egloff. “In the first quarter of 2017 we saw a continuation of the stabilization already commencing in the final quarter of last year. We are also assuming that with foreign trade still growing, container traffic with China may develop positively in the course of this year.”
   With Russia still subject to sanctions in foreign trade, Baltic countries also continue to grow import and export volumes to/from China via Hamburg, up 28.2 percent year-over-year to 76,000 TEUs, said the port.
   “Twofold handling, from the seagoing ship to the feeder and vice versa, means that a resumption of growth in transhipment services with the Baltic region produces rapid increases in volume for Hamburg,” explained Egloff.