Hamburg Harbour

From Freepedia

The Hamburg Harbour is a deep water port on the river Elbe in Hamburg, Germany.

The Hamburg Harbour, named Hamburg's "Gateway to the World", is the largest sea-harbour in Germany, and, according to the numbers of containers handled in 2004, the second-largest in Europe and the ninth-largest worldwide. In 2004, seven million containers were handled.

The harbour area is 73.99 km² (64.80 km² useable), from which 43.31 km² (34.12 km²) are land areas.

The harbour is strengthened by the Elbe splitting into Northern and Southern streams, creating an ideal place for a harbour complex for warehousing and transshipment. Currently, the so-called Freihafen area also enables toll-less use. Historically, the harbour has been the core asset of Hamburg and the justification for its location and importance.

Because of its location 110 kilometres away from the mouth of the Elbe, some ships at times have difficulties accessing the port. In face of larger and larger ships, Hamburg may lose some container traffic and has proposed to deepen the Elbe river in response, but this plan is very controversial for ecological reasons. In part due to cooperation with Lower Saxony and Bremen to build a new container seaport (JadeWeserPort) in the deep waters of Jadebusen in Wilhelmshaven, after the change of government in 2001 Hamburg withdrew this plan.

A new city district is also being planned to be built north of the harbour with the name HafenCity.