HHLA AND EUROGATE strengthen Hamburg as Feeder Hub

With the expansion of their new Feeder Logistik Zentrale (FLZ) for feederships, Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) and EUROGATE are further strengthening the Port of Hamburg’s competitiveness. After its successful start-up with Unifeeder as its first customer, FLZ as a joint venture intends to continue investing and gain additional clients. At the same time HHLA is seeing a stabilization in feeder services in Hamburg.

“With FLZ we are laying on a comprehensive, no-worry package for feedership operators,” said Heinrich Goller, Managing Director of FLZ and of HHLA Container Terminals. “Both for us as terminal operators and for feedership owners, that’s a win-win situation.” FLZ aims to optimize and speed up feedership clearance in Hamburg and hence to reduce costs for shipping companies.

Feeder services are of tremendous importance for the Port of Hamburg. At the various terminals, smaller vessels are known as feederships collect containers reaching Hamburg with the oceangoing ship from Asia or America, for instance, and transport these onwards to recipient countries in the Baltic region, also operating in the reverse order. This calls for sophisticated port logistics. On average, a ship from overseas unloaded in Hamburg supplies between 40 and 60 feederships with cargo, for instance. The same applies to loading. With 45 feeder services, Hamburg possesses the densest and most powerful feeder and distribution network in Northern Europe. The Port of Hamburg posts up to 160 feedership sailings per week. “Hamburg is the leading feeder hub in Northern Europe for the Baltic region,” said Dr. Stefan Behn, HHLA Executive Board member for the Container segment.

Following its successful start with Unifeeder as its first customer, FLZ will continue to invest. “FLZ is currently in discussion with further potential customers. And we are very optimistic on that,” says FLZ chief Goller. FLZ is also currently in talks with operators of inland waterway craft aimed at improving the link with the Port of Hamburg for these services.

FLZ is setting benchmarks in the North Range. “FLZ is unique in the world. This is an emphatic boost for Hamburg as a feeder hub,” says Bernd Bertram, manager in Germany for the Danish Unifeeder shipping line that clears the most of feeder services for the Baltic region in Hamburg. “Hamburg’s advantages as a transhipment hub are the high quality and flexibility of feedership clearance that allows for local conditions,” said Bertram.

“Even during the crisis there can be no question for us of stopping enhancement of the quality of container handling in Hamburg with innovations such as the FLZ,” says Dr. Stefan Behn, HHLA Executive Board member. “With the service improved by FLZ and the resulting shorter rotation times, in the end we achieve greater customer satisfaction. That will be decisive for tying existing services to Hamburg and gaining new ones,” said Dr. Behn.

Based at HHLA Container Terminal Tollerort (CTT), FLZ with its staff of eight is in continuous contact with HHLA’s three large container terminals, Altenwerder, Burchardkai and Tollerort, EUROGATE Container Terminal Hamburg and four additional terminals in Hamburg. When a feedership sails into the Port of Hamburg, FLZ organizes the optimal routing around the terminals by notifying berths, for example, as well as possible alterations in rotations, additional cargo bookings or coordination of work processes. “We therefore avoid waiting times and boost the productivity of feedership operators,” said Goller.

The routing of a feedership unloading containers in the Port of Hamburg for onward carriage by a vessel proceeding overseas, to Asia or America, for instance, and accepting cargo for onwards transport to Stockholm, can last for up to two days. Coordination by FLZ can accelerate this round by up to 30 percent. Should a ship from overseas calling at EUROGATE Container Terminal Hamburg be overdue, that frees capacity there for loading a feedership. FLZ directs the ship there. Waiting times are eliminated.

“FLZ is an important instrument for coordinating feeder services in the Port of Hamburg efficiently for all those involved. That saves time and costs,” according to Peter Zielinski, Managing Director of EUROGATE Container Terminal Hamburg and a member of FLZ’s Advisory Board. “Especially in difficult times for the economy, time and costs are critical factors in the equation.”

Owing to the disproportionate collapse of national economies in Eastern Europe as a consequence of the severe economic crisis, in 2009 Hamburg 2009 posted a marked downturn in feeder services. On top of that, the steep fall in charter rates and low bunkerage costs temporarily lessened the Port of Hamburg’s geographical advantages, since these factors made feeder services from the Benelux ports and around the Northern tip of Denmark into the Baltic region are commercially viable. “In recent months feeder services in Hamburg have stabilized. We are hoping for increases in 2010,” said Dr. Behn of HHLA’s Executive Board.

HHLA and EUROGATE set themselves the aim of jointly coordinating and improving calls by feederships at the Port of Hamburg at an early stage. Last year the two terminal operators founded a joint company in which HHLA holds a 67 percent stake and Eurogate one of 33 percent. The Unifeeder shipping company is FLZ’s first customer. “For all those involved, FLZ represents immense potential for optimizing container handling,” said Bernd Bertram, head of Unifeeder in Germany.