China’s container lines have resumed calling at Hamburg port which went through the bleak effects of the global recession.  Hamburg has, meanwhile, been reporting a rise in throughput since the beginning of the second quarter and, experts say, that the recovery might even compensate for the slowdown in traffic of the first quarter.

The main driver of the recovery is the rise in traffic to China and other Asian countries. Shipping lines had slowed and, in some cases, even stopped traffic as a result of the global economic and financial crisis.  The services are expected to lead to a further increase in container traffic in the second quarter, according to Claudia Roller, the chairperson of the port agency Hafen Hamburg Marketing, who reported recently on the port’s performance during the first three months of the year.

In the first quarter of the year, throughput with Asia was 2.1 percent below the level of the previous year – 1.1 million TEUs were handled then.  China has become the most important customer of the port.  Indeed, every third container originates from or is destined for the People’s Republic of China.

“We presently discern clear signs of a recovery,” said a spokesman of the HHLA AG which operates the Hamburg terminal recently when a forecast for the ongoing year was revised upwards. 

Hamburg serves as a transit point for further shipments to the Baltic Sea region. Besides the resumption of the scheduled line routes, the economic assistance introduced by the Chinese Government is expected to stimulate trade.  However, some East European countries are still struggling to surmount the results of the crisis, as a result of which the recovery at Hamburg port is lagging behind that at Rotterdam port.

Nonetheless, experts agree that Hamburg port has managed to reverse the negative trend.  They point out that, for the first time since November 2008, the monthly volume of sea goods with 10.5 million tons in March exceeded the 10 million mark by 4.6 percent at Hamburg.

In the first quarter of this year, the total volume rose 4.6 percent to 28.6 million tons over the year-earlier period.