User:BethanyJJohnson/sandboxPortOfHamburg

User:BethanyJJohnson/sandboxPortOfHamburg

Port of Hamburg

Overview

The Port of Hamburg is Germany’s largest seaport, Europe’s second largest port, and the 11th largest container port in the world. It is Hamburg’s greatest economic contributor. The port is run by the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), whose 1,900 employees manages port activities, development, and maintenance. The Port of Hamburg lies 110 km inland on the Elbe River, connecting Brunsnuttel with the Kiel Canal. This saves vessels an average of 250 nautical miles (460 km), allowing passage between the North Sea and Baltic Sea, rather than sailing around the Jutland Peninsula. The port includes 43 km of wharves, 100,000 square km of covered warehouse space, 300 km of rail tracks, 142 km of roads, 118 bridges, three cruise terminals, and 12 km of beaches. Nearly 137 million tons of cargo pass through the port annually, including over 45 million tons of rail freight cargo.The port sees roughly 9,000 maritime vessels and 70,000 freight trains every year. In 2018, 900,000 cruise ship passengers passed through Hamburg’s port.

The maritime industry is Hamburg’s largest economic resource, providing 156,000 jobs in the Hamburg metropolitan area and nearly 268,700 for Germany as a whole. 90% of the jobs relating to the port are in the city of Hamburg, while the rest remain in the city’s suburbs. The port accounts for 25% of all of the country’s shipping activities, and has generated an added value of 21.8 billion euros within the country of Germany. The Port of Hamburg allows for cargo to travel via train to and from several cities, notably within Germany, Austria, Italy, and the Czech Republic, but also as far as Turkey, Russia, and China. Nearly one third of all goods which arrive into Hamburg’s port by ship continue by train to southern Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland.

Terminals

Hamburger Hafen und Logistik (HHLA) oversees three of Hamburg’s four container cargo terminals: Terminal Burchardkai, Terminal Altenwerder, and Terminal Hamburg. Burchardkai is the port’s largest cargo handling facility. It covers 1.4 million square meters, nine berths, and 27 gantry cranes, including Twin-Forty cranes which can load or unload two 40-foot containers in one movement. Terminal Altenwerder covers one million square meters and houses four berths and 15 container gantry cranes. Terminal Tollerort is smaller, at 600,000 square meters, with four berths and 12 cranes. The fourth container terminal, Terminal Hamburg is operated by Eurogate and covers an area of 1.2 million square meters. It has 6 berths and 24 cranes.

The Port of Hamburg also has 42 multipurpose terminals for general cargo (non-container), which together processed 40 million tons of bulk cargo in 2010. The port’s bulk cargo companies include Vopak Dupeg, Hansaport Hafen, Kalikai, G.T.H. Getreide Terminal Hamburg, and Rhenus Midgard.

There are also three passenger terminals for cruise ships that pass through the port: Cruise Terminal HafenCity, which has two berths, Cruise Terminal Altona, which has one berth, and its recently-built Cruise Center Steinwerder, which has one berth and the capacity for 8,000 travelers.

History

The Port of Hamburg dates back to 1189 AD when the Emperor Barbarossa offered a guarantee to the city of Hamburg for customs-free travel between the North Sea and the lower Elbe, as well as the right to hold markets. In 1241 Hamburg, in partnership with the village of Lubeck, had monopolized the salt-fish trade in the North and Baltic seas region and by the 14th century the port was a part of a network of over 70 trade cities. Within a few centuries it had become a major port. Many new goods were introduced to Germany and Northern Europe through Hamburg’s port, including coffee, and for centuries its main trades were beer, pelts, and salt. The city of Hamburg was neutral during the Thirty Years' War which guaranteed trade and allowed the port to grow. This caused the port to become an important center for information and communication and it became a major international harbour in the 18th century. It took in 3,000 ships every year from the Americas, India, East Asia, Australia, and Africa, and employed 25,000 people by the end of the 18th century. This created one of the largest wealth gaps seen in Europe at the time with eight out of ten people living in poverty, but the eight-year French occupation of Hamburg introduced a judicial system and voting for all men.

In May of 1842 a large fire caused massive destruction to the port, which gave an opportunity for the city to redesign the port’s infrastructure. With its new open tidal harbor, ships could now be unloaded and reloaded within 24 hours, and by 1872 cargo was being directly transferred from ships to trains for the first time. By the second half of the 19th century, the Port of Hamburg had become the fastest harbor in the world.

In 1842 cholera broke out in Hamburg, causing the death of 10,000 people. This led to the opening of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in 1900, a research center in the port to study new diseases. Today, the institute studies dengue fever, malaria, and ebola.

In the summer of 1943, 80% of the port had been destroyed by the bombings of WWII. This took 10 years to rebuild. In 1962 damage was caused again by a flood which killed hundreds of people.

Immigration

Besides cargo, the port in Hamburg has also been used by many immigrants. It was the last stop for millions, some waiting in Hamburg for months before setting sail for America. In 1901 the port’s immigration halls were built to house and quarantine immigrants from the rest of the city. Here they were registered, checked, medically examined, and given three meals a day for a period of three to five days before continuing on to their journey. The immigrant halls had a grocery store, barber, Catholic and Protestant churches, Jewish synagogue, and eventually even a cinema. At the time, this was the only port that had anything of the kind.

Partners

Today, the Port of Hamburg is in partnership with ports around the world, which allow the employees of each port to learn from each other and exchange knowledge and expertise on projects, infrastructure, trends, and technology. Its current partners are  Port of Busan, Port of Tanzania, Port of Kaohsiung, Shenzhen Port Association, Port of Yokohama, Port of Montevideo, Port of Halifax, Port of Gothenburg, Port of Bronka, Port of Shanghai, and Port of Soderhamn. There are vessels with direct routes from these ports to the Port of Hamburg. The transit time between Hamburg and Hong Kong is around 33 days, Hamburg and Singapore is 24 days, Hamburg and Sydney is 58 days, and Hamburg and New York is 19 days.

Refurbishments

The port has expanded in the last few decades, with trade volume increasing from 61 million tons in 1990 to 125.7 million tons in 2005, and HPA plans to continue the growth. In 2017, the port welcomed its first 20,000 TEU vessel, the Japanese Mitsui O.S.K. Line’s MOL TRIUMPH. In the future, the port will allow for in increase in the number of larger ships that come through the port. HPA is working on navigational channel adjustment, and plans to widen the channel to 385 meters. HPA plans to have the channel’s war debris removed by the end of 2019 to begin dredging the channel deeper in 2020. The entire port is going through a refurbishment program, including new bridges, a new cruise terminal, and the testing of 5g wireless technology.

Preparation for Brexit

The port has spent months preparing for various hard Brexit scenarios, and is prepared to the influx of shipping that could be redirected to Hamburg as a result of a no-deal Brexit. HPA acknowledges that this would require extra checks at the port and is making preparations for this.