Eurogate Group generated a net profit of €85.2 million (US$105 million) for 2017, a year-on-year increase of 12.2%, according to annual results released by the company.

The German terminal operator attributed the result to non-recurring effects and significantly improved income from investments.

The group handled a total of 14,413,182 TEUs, 1.4% fewer than in 2016, and revenue for the year fell by 4.9% to €607.9 million (US$751 million).

“The financial year 2017 has shown us that there are opportunities out there, but that we must step up our efforts if we are to capitalize on them,” said Michael Blach, chairman of the management board at Eurogate Group. “Eurogate has benefitted from the realignments of the major alliances at its Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven locations. One positive outcome was that in a decision in favour of Germany’s only deepwater port, Ocean Alliance has included Eurogate Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven in its network. Volkswagen’s decision to put its faith in the location and set up a logistics centre there is more welcome news. This will give Wilhelmshaven additional impetus. However, the ongoing trend towards mega carriers with transport capacities of up to 23,000 TEUs impacts our processes. In order to remain competitive, we are therefore focusing in the long term on standardization and the implementation of digitalization and automation technologies, coupled with ongoing process optimization.”

Eurogate’s Wilhelmshaven terminal grew its container throughput by 15.1% to 554,449 TEUs, while the three terminals in Bremerhaven posted a throughput of 5,536,889 TEUs, a year-on-year increase of 0.9%.

On the other hand, Eurogate Container Terminal Hamburg saw its volumes drop 25.6% to 1,686,364 TEUs, partly due to the mergers between UASC and Hapag-Lloyd and between China Shipping and COSCO, and partly due to the bankruptcy of Hanjin Shipping.

Eurogate Intermodal, the group’s provider of transport connections to inland Europe, transported 657,969 TEUs by truck and rail to the rest of Germany in 2017, 2% more than in 2016. The total international volume handled by the intermodal network increased by 5.2% to just over 1 million TEUs.

La Spezia Container Terminal, the Ligurian terminal of Eurogate subsidiary Contship Italia, grew its container throughput by 17% to 1,339,655 TEUs, but the Contship Italia Group’s overall volume fell by 7.5% to 4,636,655 TEUs because of lower transhipment volumes at the container terminals in Gioia Tauro and Cagliari. Contship’s intermodal business transported 301,009 TEUs by rail, a year-on-year increase of 10.9%.

Eurogate Tanger S.A. in Morocco increased its throughput by 22.9% to 1,384,714 TEUs. Eurogate is continuing to invest in the location by entering into a joint venture with Contship Italia and Moroccan port operator Marsa Maroc for the construction and operation of Container Terminal 3, located in the enlargement area of TangerMed, west of Eurogate Tanger. TC3 will become the 15^th terminal in the Eurogate network from 2020.

For 2018, Eurogate expects the general conditions to remain stable and will continue to focus on ongoing process optimization in order to offer customers more efficient handling operations.