News / Hamburg gives go-ahead for Eurogate terminal expansion

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Hamburg’s port authority and terminal operator, Eurogate, has agreed to press ahead with a new port expansion programme for Germany’s largest port.

The project, which will see the port’s flagship Burchardkai site expanded by some 28ha to the west of Eurogate’s current Burchardkai operation – Container Terminal Hamburg (CTH) will have a new quay, of just over 1km.

The development will be accompanied by the creation of a larger ship-turning basin at the entrance of the Burchardkai terminals, expanded from the current 480 metres to 600 metres, which will involve cutting into a headland. The spoil will used to expand CTH.

The investment cost for the two associated projects is estimated at €1.1bn ($1.3bn) in terms of the public works, while Eurogate announced on Friday that it would commit €700m to the expanded terminal after signing a lease agreement with Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), in a project that will include fully automating the existing CTH terminal.

“The urgently needed expansion of the turntable and the expansion and modernisation of the handling facilities are important decisions for a positive future for the port of Hamburg,” Tom Eckelmann, Eurogate chair, said.

“We associate the expansion and modernisation with the start of the conversion from manual handling operations to an automated operating concept at the Hamburg site. We will design the superstructures, large-scale equipment and IT infrastructure, starting at the existing terminal, on an automated handling system for the entire terminal, including the expansion.

“In this way, we are consistently pursuing our goals of both increasing productivity and decarbonisation through the complete electrification of handling equipment,” he added.

Planning approval of the CTH expansion was originally given in 2022 and is expected to add up to 2m teu of annual handling capacity at the port – but it is also expected to be a protracted process, the HPA funding requiring EU approval due to state aid rules, which could mean the expanded terminal comes into operation in the middle of the 2030s.

“Since public financing is planned for the construction of the public infrastructure, the European Commission must agree. This examination under state aid law can take several years,” a Eurogate statement said.

“In order to create the greatest possible legal certainty for the chosen procurement law procedure, the HPA is also voluntarily conducting an upstream ex-ante procedure, the results of which are expected in 2026,” it added.

According to figures obtained from the eeSea liner database, despite continuing reports of port congestion blighting many operations across Northern Europe, on the face of it Hamburg is the least utilised of the major ports in the region.

Source: eeSea

According to German trade publication DVZ, Eurogate has seen 14% year-on-year container growth at CTH in the first five months of the year, to 530,000 teu. Its Bremerhaven facilities handed 1.2m teu in the same period, a year-on-year increase of 7%.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen what impact the current four-day stoppage on Hamburg’s rail activities will have on congestion levels at the German hub – The Loadstar reported last week that Hamburg Port Railway transported 2.6m containers in 2024, equivalent to 7,123 a day.

Thus, a four-day shutdown could lead to a build-up of just under 30,000 containers either waiting for a train or having to be moved by truck.