The economic crisis turned Hamburg's port into a ghost town. Now that things are picking up, the container terminals at Germany's most important shipping hub are buzzing with life again In the evening, when the at-times inhospitable northern German weather allows it, Klaus-Dieter Peters swaps his suit and tie for casual clothes and rides his bicycle from his home in the upmarket Hamburg neighborhood of Othmarschen to the beach along the edge of the city's Elbe River. There, the 57-year-old executive, who is the CEO of Hamburg Harbor and Logistics AG (HHLA), sits on the sand and enjoys a beer and a cigar. And he watches the Burchardkai container terminal on the other side of river, one of the three container terminals that HHLA operates in the Port of Hamburg.
For months, the scene resembled a still life with cranes. The container cranes' arms were raised into the sky, as if they had capitulated in the face of the economic downturn. Occasionally, but only occasionally, a ship passed by the bleak silhouette of the terminal. The port, which usually buzzes with life around the clock, was almost silent.
Last year, Hamburg's dream of an eternal boom and its ambitions to become Europe's top logistical hub seemed to have come to an end. The port's container throughput fell by 28 percent in 2009 as a result of the economic crisis. In the competition to be Europe's most important container port, Hamburg lagged in third place behind Rotterdam and Antwerp. And in the global league tables, the German port found itself in the no-man's-land of the middle rankings -- a place which did not correspond to the self-image of the proud Hanseatic city.
The Red Blood Cells of Globalization
After a decade of euphoric growth, the crash hit HHLA, Hamburg's largest terminal operator -- which is also owned by the city -- particularly hard. "For us, 2009 was a bad year of unprecedented proportions," Peters says. But he emphasizes that that unpleasant chapter is now over. "In the last couple of months things have been taking off again," he adds quickly. Indeed, the numbers are looking up. The container throughput in the Port of Hamburg increased by 4 percent in the first half of 2010, while HHLA's terminals even saw throughput rise by nearly 9 percent.