Eurogate: Giant Boxships Bring Record Volumes
Eurogate Container Terminal HamburgGermany’s terminal operator Eurogate Group increased its container handling volumes Europe-wide in 2014 by 4.2 % to all time high 14.8 million TEUs, attributed to a rising number of mega container ships calling at the operator’s terminals.
8.1 million TEUs were handled at the German terminal locations Bremerhaven, Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven, equivalent to a rise of 3.5 per cent overall.
The trend among shipping lines to deploy ever larger vessels is continuing, says Eurogate. Only recently, the CSCL Globe (19,100 TEUs) called at Eurogate Container Terminal Hamburg. The MSC Oscar (19,224 TEUs), currently the largest container ship in the world, is expected at Wilhelmshaven on March 6.
Emanuel Schiffer, Chairman of the Eurogate Group Management Board, said: ”The forecasts have proved correct. Our customers are calling at our container ports with ever larger container vessels. In the meantime, orders to build container ships with transport capacities of 22,000 TEUs are on the point of being contracted out. We are expecting this trend to continue. It presents considerable challenges for the infrastructure of the seaports as well as the superstructure of the container terminal operators.”
Operating activities at the international Eurogate locations developed positively overall. The Italian container terminals managed slight growth of 0.3 per cent. Eurogate Tanger, located directly on the Strait of Gibraltar, raised volumes by 33.2 per cent. The throughput at the Ust-Luga Container Terminal increased by 68.1 per cent to 103,521 TEUs despite the Russian crisis situation.
