The Port of Hamburg Marketing Authority has revealed that the German leader enjoyed an upturn in fortunes during 2010, with total cargo throughput of 121m tonnes, representing year-on-year growth of nearly 10 per cent.
For the 12-month period, 7.9m TEU (20ft standard containers) passed through the Port of Hamburg, making for a total 12.7 per cent increase on the crisis-hit year of 2009.
Growth was driven not only by an improvement in the German market, but also by positive recovery in the crucial Baltic and eastern European markets.
'On both general and bulk cargo, we are delighted at the gratifying result on throughput,' said Claudia Roller, CEO of the Marketing Authority. 'With 121m tonnes of seaborne cargo handled, in 2010 the total for the Port of Hamburg was around 11m tonnes up on 2009.
'In Hamburg too, in 2009 the worldwide economic and financial crisis led to a steep downturn in seaborne cargo throughput,' she continued. 'In 2010 we are not yet again up to the volumes handled that we should like to have. Despite the satisfactory process of catching up in the course of the second half of 2010, we did not quite reach the previous year’s level.
'The available national economic data causes us to reckon on being able to resume the record figures of 2008 again during the first half of 2012,' Ms Roller added.
