Elbe dredging boosts Hamburg traffic

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

18 Mar 2008

Industry players believe that the dredging of Germany's River Elbe is the main reason why the port of Hamburg has handled a record 11.6% more container cargoes in 2007.The year-on-year increase in throughput has been credited to the dredging project which opened the harbour to transshipment routes to the Baltic Sea regions. According to one Hamburg port official, ''after the last dredging, Hamburg's share of container traffic of the North Range ports in Europe has risen from 22% to 26%.'' Port authorities also pointed out how in 2007 feeder systems to the Baltic regions and eastern European ports did better than other routes with an impressive growth rate of 21.2%. Russian traffic to and from Hamburg grew 21.6% (730,000 TEUs), making Russia the third largest container trading partner for Hamburg. Singapore was Hamburg's second largest container trading partner with 749,000 TEUs, and the premier German port's traffic on Asian sea routes jumped 14.9%. Hamburg's traffic to and from India shot up by 48%, with industry players predicting that traffic will continue to increase if India persists with its port modernization measures and general economic growth. China maintained its position as Hamburg's top trading partner with some 3.2 million TEUs being handled by Hamburg's container facilities in 2007, a 23% jump from the previous year's volumes.