Hamburg now ranks eighth among world container ports - Cargo handling record despite economic downturn in Germany. In handling cargoes totalling 92.4 million t the Port of Hamburg's growth rate in 2001 was 8.5 percent up on the previous year.

Hamburg was thus among the small group of European ports to achieve substantial growth in 2001. The port succeeded yet again in gaining market share. With growth accelerating by 8.5 percent generally and with container traffic up by 10.4 percent, Hamburg reported the highest growth rates anywhere in Europe. In all cargo-handling categories, i.e., containers, conventional cargoes and bulk cargoes, volume was up on the previous year's. Rotterdam and Antwerp reported lower volumes of cargoes handled. The Bremen ports achieved a slight advance of 2.7 percent. For the first time Hamburg achieved faster growth than its partner city Marseilles.

Containers represent about 54 percent of all cargoes handled. Here Hamburg performed considerably better than its competitors, indeed by a considerable margin. The number of containers handled advanced by 10.4 percent to 4.7 million TEU (20'-equivalent standard containers). The worldwide economic downturn in 2001 caused stagnation in the quantity of containers handled by the world's top ten container ports. Hamburg also strengthened its place as the second largest container port In Europe.

On container traffic all the leading Chinese carriers are customers in Hamburg. Among these are COSCO, China Shipping Container Line and Sinotrans. Hamburg offers the most frequent sailings to China of any port in Northern Europe. As in the previous year, China accounted for the largest slice of container traffic growth of any country in East Asia. Such traffic was 13.5 percent up on the previous year.

Almost 50 percent of all container handling in Hamburg is in the trade with Asia. Many leading liner services and alliances of shipping companies have concentrated their services on Hamburg as mainport for North Europe. In 2001 America's share of Hamburg container traffic rose to 15.2 percent (2000: 13.9 percent). For the first time more containers were handled for North America (387,000 TEU, up by 35.6 percent) than for Latin America (325,000 TEU, up by 7 percent). Outwardcargoes for the Latin American trades stagnated in the second half of the year, the reasons being the economic crisis in Argentina and devaluation of the Brazilian currency.

The fact that Hamburg container terminals succeeded in gaining the loyalty of new liner services attracting high cargo volumes also strengthened Hamburg's position as a hub port an distribution center for feeder services. Several new liner services started up between Hamburg and the Baltic region. Expansion of traffic with Hamburg's partner city of St. Petersburg was another important feature of 2001. Container traffic between Hamburg and the Baltic grewby 18.7 percent and reached 959,000 TEU. Traffic withSt. Petersburg rose by no less than 79.7 percent to 165,000 TEU.