With 110 million tonnes of sea-borne cargo handled in 2009, a year impacted by the global economic and financial markets crisis, the port of Hamburg fell short of the previous year's result by around 30 million tonnes, down 21.4 percent.
The effects of the global economic slump hit general cargo, the dominant segment for the Port of Hamburg with 73.6 million tonnes, down 24.8 percent, more severely than bulk cargo handling, which amounted to a total of 36.8 million tonnes, down 13.4 percent for 2009.
Container transhipments at the Port of Hamburg for the period totaled 71.2 million tonnes, down 25.1 percent. In terms of TEUs, this was equivalent to 7.01 million TEUs, down 28.0 percent.
Asia remained the most important route for container traffic for the Port of Hamburg in 2009, with a total of 4.2 million TEUs, down 24.3 pecent handled in traffic to and from Asia. This is a reduction by about 1.3 million TEUs compared with the same period a year earlier.
"With a total transhipment volume of 110.4 million tons in what was a difficult year for the entire port related industries and shipping sector, we recorded an exceptionally severe decline in the history of our port to date. In the period from January to December 2009, the terminals at the Port of Hamburg handled some 30 million tons of cargo less than in the year 2008. However, since the third quarter of 2009, we have seen initial signs of a stabilising trend, and we are now witnessing a slight upward trend again," said Claudia Roller, chairwoman of port of Hamburg marketing association.
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