So, what about the future? There are a few problems – it is slow, the inland waterway network is not yet by any means comprehensive,<\/p>\n
<\/strike> <\/p>\n
and it also needs a fair amount of investment.<\/p>\n
But on the positive side there is political will behind it: according to the national infrastructure development plan (Bundesverkehrswegeplan) the depth of the Elbe must be 1.6 metres between Hamburg and Dresden 345 days per year in order to make it industry friendly. Other initiatives mean that public co-funding is now more accessible and budgets increased for initiatives like waterway transport or port innovation.<\/p>\n
Further, as the European Union’s NAIDES programme points out, bulk goods can be moved around via waterway transport at a reasonably low price, a fact that the construction industry, with its very dense, heavy loads, is already taking advantage of. Alongside this, the chemical and fuel industries are showing a preference for water transport for oil or reactive agents, because it has the highest safety norms.<\/p>\n
Moreover, there are low emissions levels and relatively low noise levels – all of which feature on civic authorities environmental radar.<\/p>\n
All this has a bearing on the fortunes of the Port of Duisburg – which, recently has been engaged in a flurry of activity. Prompted by the opening of the first shipping line container terminal in the European hinterland, last year the container business strengthened its position as the largest cargo group in ship and train transfers, up by 14% to 901,000 teu. Over 330 container trains each week now connect Duisburg with more than 80 destinations in Europe.<\/p>\n
Its gaining importance as a hinterland hub has doubtless been helped along by a mixture of the rising fortunes of waterway transport, and rising costs elsewhere. The port’s broad offering of logistics and hub services may also have been helped by the recession’s euro-pinching effect as companies tighten their practices and try to keep activity localised, doing away with unnecessary hauls and storage facilities.<\/p>\n
Late last year, European InterBulk Group, came to an agreement with the port to build a central European hub for intermodal shipments of containerised dry and liquid bulk products on a 20,000 square metre site in the port – the largest the group has invested in to date.<\/p>\n
The installation’s annual handling capacity is around 25,000 teu, and features three platforms for the transfer to and from containers, railcar hoppers and silo trucks. Cargo will be delivered and collected by train, truck and\/or barge from the neighbouring DUSS and DeCeTe terminals. Most importantly, the hub is offering ‘value added services’, such as packaging, de-bagging and warehousing.<\/p>\n
However, despite all this investment, the signs of the downturn are beginning to bite: even with a strong first half, total 2008 port throughput of 54.5m tonnes was just shy of the 2007 levels with some sectors showing a more marked fall. A recent statement by the port keeps to the modest claim “that we will do better than the market average this year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to the nations Federal Waterways and Shipping Authority, inland water transport accounts for around a fifth of western Germanys total domestic long-distance transport volume. Bulk goods are the usual commodities but ro-ro container figures were, in 2008, beginning to rise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1145,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1146,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1144\/revisions\/1146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1144"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}