Port of Hamburg on show at the transport logistic China in Shanghai
with shared exhibition booth (Hall E2, booth 209/310)

At the transport logistic China was held on 8–10 June 2010 in Hamburg’s partner city Shanghai, port-related businesses from Hamburg and the surrounding region will present themselves under the joint “Port of Hamburg” umbrella. The exhi-bition booth, organised by Port of Hamburg Marketing (HHM), served the compa-nies Brunsbüttel Ports GmbH, Buss Group GmbH & Co. KG, Gerlach Zolldienste GmbH, Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG, IGS Logistics Group Holding GmbH, Saco Shipping GmbH, Straightway Finland ry., TCO Transcargo GmbH and HWF Hamburgische Gesellschaft für Wirtschaftsförderung mbH as a platform for establish-ing new business contacts. This was the fourth time that Port of Hamburg Market-ing has attended transport logistic China with its own booth. The 132-square metre area this year will accommodate a total of nine different businesses presenting them-selves to the public.

During the three days of the fair, the representatives of the Hamburg-based companies and the Port of Hamburg Marketing representatives Axel Mattern and Mathias Schulz, supported by the representatives of the Port of Hamburg office in Shanghai, Lars Anke and Pan Hua, have been fostering contacts with partners and cus-tomers in the import, export, port and transport sectors and promoting the efficiency and flexibility of the Port of Hamburg and its port-related businesses.

The Port of Hamburg is the most important European seaport for Chinese foreign trade. This year, Port of Hamburg Marketing has forecast around 2.5 million contain-ers (TEU) in imports from and exports to China to be handled at the Port of Hamburg. All the major shipping companies linking China with northern Europe call at the Port of Hamburg, and most of them also have their European or German headquarters in Hamburg. Germany’s biggest port and logistics centre Hamburg currently offers its customers and partners a total of 31 scheduled liner services in the trade area “Far East” with 27 services between Hamburg and Chinese ports.
The major product groups reaching Hamburg from China for distribution to the Ger-man and European markets include electrical equipment, textiles, machinery, food-stuffs, computers, televisions and other consumer electronics and office equipment. Exports to China from Germany and neighbouring European countries include ma-chinery and components, automotive parts, electrical equipment, chemical products, paper, steel and other metals to China via Hamburg. Germany is China’s most impor-tant trading partner in Europe. Thanks to its excellent transport links to the economic centres in Germany and Europe as a whole, as well as to the Baltic region and Rus-sia, the Port of Hamburg offers the best infrastructure for the distribution of import and export goods on the China–Northern Europe route. A major proportion of tran-shipments passing through the Port of Hamburg are carried on environmentally friendly rail or feeder vessels.
 Sea cargo handling at the Port of Hamburg is picking up again, with a total of 28.6 million tons handled during the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 4.6 per cent. Cargo handling in March 2010 topped the 10-million ton mark for the first time since November 2008 and reached 10.5 million tons (up 10.7 per cent). On the import side, Port of Hamburg Marketing – the marketing organisation of the Port of Hamburg – recorded cargo-handling figures of 16.7 million tons (+6.0 per cent). Exports via Hamburg also increased compared with the first quarter of 2009, with a total of 11.9 million tons (+2.7 per cent).
During March 2010, some 642,000 TEU were handled in Hamburg, an increase of 10.9 per cent compared with the same month of last year. In the rail-borne traffic be-tween the seaport and the hinterland, Hamburg Port Railway reports a rise of no less than 16 per cent for the first quarter of 2010, with 448,238 TEU carried.
Increasing numbers of liner services to China and Asia that were suspended during the financial and economic crisis have  resumed operations since April this year, and this will contribute to grow in the container-handling segment in Hamburg.
“Asia, led by China, is by far the most significant market partner for the Port of Ham-burg in the container-handling segment. One out of three containers handled in Hamburg comes from or goes to China.  As Europe’s leading China port, the Ham-burg hub handles substantial volumes of cargo from and to China – so-called tran-shipment cargo – in the feeder traffic with neighbouring European countries, mainly in the Baltic region,” explains Port of Hamburg CEO Claudia Roller. “The export sec-tors in China and Germany will also benefit from a recovery in world trade, where the World Bank projects growth of around 4.3 per cent for 2010,” adds Claudia Roller.

During the first two months of this year, UniCredit Bank AG conducted a survey of major shipping companies based in Germany and Europe and compiled a “Maritime Trend Ba-rometer” reflecting the current situation based on the results. The shipping companies polled in this latest survey again awarded the Port of Hamburg the top ranking, in a repeat of the 2007 result. Among the eight major seaports in northern Europe, Hamburg came out ahead of Rotterdam and Antwerp with a very high average of 1.84. The international shipping com-panies compared Hamburg favourably in comparison with the other ports particularly in terms of the excellent cargo volume, the high quality and speed of handling, and the vast range of logistics services on offer.