Container traffic up 10% at Amsterdam

Container traffic in the Port of Amsterdam increased by more than 10 percent in 2008 from the previous year, easily outpacing growth at its much larger neighbors Antwerp and Rotterdam, but still falling short of target, joc.com informs.

The second-largest Dutch port handled 424,880 TEUs, up 10.2 percent on 385,603 TEUs in 2007. Antwerp’s box volume gained 6 percent in 2008 while Rotterdam traffic was flat.

Amsterdam failed, however, to attain its forecast of 500,000 TEUs following a 21-percent rise in 2007. This reflected a slowdown in shipments from Asia, the main long-haul traffic at the Ceres Paragon Terminal, the port’s only box facility, in the final three months of the year. In the first three quarters traffic was up 18 percent on the previous-year period.           

Overall traffic in Amsterdam and its satellite hubs of Velsen/Ijmuiden, Beverwijk and Zaanstad rose by 4 percent to 90.9 million metric tons from 87.4 million tons in 2007. Amsterdam accounted for most of the growth, boosting traffic by 7 percent to 72.4 million tons from 67.9 million tons.

“The very strong performance achieved in the first 10 months could not be maintained in the last two months,” said Port of Amsterdam Chief Executive Hans Gerson in releasing the statistics. But over the whole year, we fared remarkably well in comparison to other ports in the Le Havre-Hamburg range. Oil products traffic rose 15.3 percent, driven mainly by higher exports to the United States. But coal shipments fell 4.2 percent as utilities had built up large stockpiles.

“Growth in 2009 is expected to be clearly smaller. It is not yet clear to what extent and for how long the recession will affect the various sectors in the port,” Gerson said.

Container traffic is expected to continue outperforming rivals in the Le Havre-Hamburg range after Hong Kong’s Hutchison Port Holdings acquired control of the 1 million-TEU Ceres terminal in late December in a share swap that gave Japanese carrier NYK a minority stake in its ECT terminal in Rotterdam.

Source: Transportweekly