Rotterdam becomes Austria's main port for the 10th time

In 2007, Rotterdam was Austria’s most important seaport for the tenth consecutive time, with a throughput of 5.1 million tonnes. This was over 7% more than the previous year and represented a market share of 31%. This was revealed in the Seehafenbilanz for 2007, which the Austrian trade magazine for the logistics sector Verkehr draws up every year. The port of Koper (Slovenia) remained second, with 4 million tonnes. Four million tonnes of cargo, 2% more than in 2006, were shipped eastwards from Rotterdam. Austrian exports via Rotterdam were 33% up, to 1.1 million tonnes.

Strong growth in exports

Franz Zauner, the Rotterdam Representative for Austria and Slovakia, appeared very pleased with the jubilee, the again stronger overall growth and the sharp rise in exports. This made Rotterdam climb from the fourth to the second place.

On the import side, the growth bottomed out due to increasing competition from the Southern ports in iron ore, coal and other dry bulk. Ore and metals continue to make up the lion’s share of imports via Rotterdam. The ores are destined for the Voestalpine blast furnaces in Linz.

Containers, LNG

Container traffic was up, incoming and outgoing, by over 10%, from 102,000 to 113,000 TEU. The impact was felt particularly strongly on the export side in tonnes, due to the much higher load factor per TEU.

Zauner estimates the total Austrian container volume at 450,000 TEU. Rotterdam has therefore captured a market share of 25% thanks to the more than 20 weekly shuttle trains operated by Kühne+Nagel, Intercontainer ICA Austria, Cargo-Partner, Optimodal and Hupac Intermodal. As far as the near future is concerned, Zauner sees opportunities for growth particularly in rail shuttles to the Czech Republic and Slovakia, steel and project cargo.

A new activity will be the supply of LNG to the Austrian joint venture EconGas (Begas, EVN, Linz AG, OMV Gas&Power, OÖ Ferngas AG, Wien Energie). This combination acquired a 5% stake in the Gate-terminal now under construction at Maasvlakte. EconGas plans to bring up to 3 billion cubic meters into the grid via Gate. The gas will be sold to customers in Austria, Germany, Italy and Hungary. Expansion to other Central European countries is likely.

Northern Ports and Southern Ports

After increasing their share in 2005, the ‘Southern Ports’ (Adriatic and Black Sea) again lost out a little to the ‘Northern Ports’ (North Sea). Their respective market shares were 65.6 and 34.4% of the total 15 million tonnes.