According to the CEO of Hapag-Lloyd, Rolf Habben Jansen, the Hamburg city council is moving too slowly to make a decision on building a new link across the river Elbe in the city’s port area, which is of great importance to the container shipping company.
Habben Jansen calls on politicians to decide as soon as possible on a future link to replace the existing bridge, the Köhlbrandbrücke, over the Elbe.
”This has been talked about for as long as the dredging of the Elbe,” Habben Jansen said during a meeting with German journalists, according to the media outlet Hamburger Abendblatt.
”We need a decision,” added the top boss, referring to the long-awaited but now completed dredging of the shipping channel in the river that connects the Port of Hamburg with the North Sea.
The Köhlbrandbrücke in Hamburg is too low for Hapag-Lloyd’s largest ships, and a planned replacement for the bridge should come soon, says the company’s CEO. | Photo: Marcus /Ritzau Scanpix
The Köhlbrandbrücke from 1974 is of great importance for Hapag-Lloyd’s use of the Port of Hamburg.
The bridge connects two port areas on either side of the Elbe River, but it is too low for Hapag-Lloyd’s largest ships to call at the Alternwerder container terminal, which is located in the port area behind the bridge.
Hapag-Lloyd owns just over a quarter of the shares in Altenwerder, while the port’s largest terminal operator, HHLA, owns the remainder.
Habben Jansen makes no secret of the fact that he would prefer the new connection to be either a tunnel or a bridge that is higher than the existing Köhlbrandbrücke, so that the company’s largest vessels have access to Altenwerder.
However, if the new link is a bridge of the same height as the current one, it will not enhance the commercial usability of the Altenwerder terminal, according to Hapag-Lloyd’s CEO.
Hamburg-based Hapag-Lloyd, Germany’s largest shipping company, recently announced that up to a tenth of its container volumes handled in Hamburg will be moved to other German ports when the company enters into a partnership with Maersk in February 2025.
However, both Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk plan to continue calling at Hamburg with large container ships.
The Hamburg city council is expected to make a decision on the new Elbe connection this year.
(Translated using DeepL with additional editing by Kristoffer Grønbæk)
