Hamburg Port marks growth despite ukraine crisis

Germany’s Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) increased its revenue by 6 percent to EUR 906.7 million (USD 1.13bn) in the first nine months of 2014. Growth in the operating result (EBIT) was at 10.9 percent. The company increased its operating result to EUR 131.3 million (USD 163.7m) in the first three quarters. The
group says that it further expanded its position in the container transport market and increased its hinterland transport volume by over 10 percent. HHLA also experienced further growth in the container throughput.

 The pace of growth was restricted, however, by a decrease in feeder traffic at HHLA’s Hamburg terminals which stemmed partly from a significant reduction in traffic with Russia. The economic impact of the conflict in Ukraine also affected the rate of throughput growth.

Revenue and the operating results outperformed the volume growth at HHLA. Amongst other things, this was attributable to operational improvements, moves to optimise the cost of coping with peak loads, and a noticeable increase in the proportion of higher-revenue and higher-margin overseas traffic in the handling mix. HHLA’s Hamburg terminals increased their throughput by 1.8 percent in the first nine months despite a drop of around 5 percent in feeder traffic, especially with Russia.

 This was primarily due to further marked growth of 8.5 percent in Far East traffic. Together with the fall in container throughput in Odessa due to the conflict in Ukraine, this meant that container throughput at all the HHLA terminals (Hamburg and Odessa) increased by 0.3 percent in total.