Port of Hamburg expects transport chains to remain volatile for the rest of the year as the ripple effect from ship delays is seen to persist.

Germany's largest seaport made the forecast as it announced its nine-month results which saw good seaborne cargo handling result.

"Worldwide transport chains will remain volatile for the rest of the year. Delayed ship’s arrivals plus the related delivery postponements also hit the ports," said Axel Mattern, CEO Port of Hamburg Marketing.

"The problems of supply chains meanwhile out of synch will continue to be apparent at the land/sea transport interface," he added, noting that despite providing 24/7 service, for the terminals a "fraught situation will persist on vessel clearance.” 

For his part, Ingo Egloff said partly since the beginning of the year, large sections of industry have suffered bottlenecks on deliveries.

"Despite full order books, this can hamper production," he said.

The ifo Institut puts German industry’s forfeited added value on account of delivery bottlenecks at almost 40 million euros. Having previously put fourth-quarter growth at 1.3%, the institute now reckons with just 0.5%, the gateway said in a statement.

Despite the current situation, the Port of Hamburg’s marketing organization reckons on continuation of the "slight upward trend" in seaborne cargo throughput during the fourth quarter.

For the Port of Hamburg, it noted that total throughput of around 130 million tons and 8.7 million TEU for 2021 also remains attainable.

Meanwhile, for the first nine months of the year, Germany’s largest port recorded 95.8 million tons of cargo representing a 2.9% increase in seaborne cargo throughput.

It said bulk cargo throughput advanced especially strongly, being 6.1% ahead at 29.7 million tons.

Totalling 66.1 million tons, in the first three quarters general cargo throughput was a modest 1.6% ahead.

"The upward trend was also maintained on container handling. A total of 6.5 million TEU - 20-ft standard containers - were hoisted across the quay walls of Hamburg’s container terminals, a 2.4% gain," Port of Hamburg said.

Despite this positive throughput trend, the Port of Hamburg was not yet able to fully overhaul last year’s downturn caused by the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, it noted that pre- and post-voyage railborne container transport set a new record at 2.1 million TEU, or an 8.3% growth.

"At 709,000 TEU, the Port of Hamburg posted the highest quarterly total in its history for containers transported," Mattern said, noting that the Port of Hamburg accordingly further strengthened its position as Europe’s largest rail port.

Port of Hamburg said throughput of containerized general cargo in the first three quarters of 2021 totalled 65.2 million tons, representing a gain of 1.5%. At 908,000 tons, conventional general cargo was up by 5.2%.

In the container throughput sector, exports, 2.9% up at 3.2 million TEUs, outperformed imports, which was up 1.9% at 3.3 million TEUs.

Mattern pointed out that among the Port of Hamburg's main trade lanes, with the exception of Australia/Pacific (-0.1 percent), the other container trade lanes of the Americas (+6.7%), Asia (+1.4%), Africa (+4.5%) and Europe (+1.6%) all recorded positive throughput growth.

"The upward trend in seaborne container throughput evident during the first half was maintained in the third quarter," Mattern said.