The Port of Hamburg posted a container-handling throughput of 8.8 million TEUs for 2015, a 9.3% fall compared to 2014.

The port attributed the decrease to lower volumes to and from China, Russia and Poland, saying that it handled about 800,000 fewer containers for these trading partners.

Axel Mattern, member of the executive board at Port of Hamburg Marketing, said that one of the reasons that Hamburg was more seriously affected than other major European ports such as Antwerp or Rotterdam is that its proportion of transhipment cargo, a large part of which is for China and Russia, is around seven percentage points higher.

“Container traffic with China down by 14.4% and with Russia by 34.4% could not be offset in volume by growth in container traffic with other countries such as Malaysia, India, the United Arab Emirates or Mexico,” said Mattern. “Since the statistics for worldwide transhipment traffic feature the waterside transfer from the large container ship to the feeder or vice versa each time this occurs, any transhipment downturn doubly affects port results.”

On the other hand, the port posted record volumes for its container-rail operations, having handled 2.3 million TEUs, which was a 2.8% year-on-year increase.

“Hamburg is the European leader for containers transported by rail, and is the top rail port,” said Ingo Egloff, member of the Port of Hamburg Marketing executive board. “Among ports in northern Europe, Hamburg’s share of containers transported by rail is around 50%, while Rotterdam’s is about 19% and Antwerp’s roughly 8%.”

More than 200 freight trains enter or leave Hamburg every day, according to the port.

The port said that it was difficult to make a forecast for 2016 because of uncertainty in foreign trade in core markets, but that a realistic estimate would be for total 2016 throughput to be at around the same level as 2015.