Typisch bremisch Typically “Bremish”

eady unloaded some of its cargo in Rotterdam. Even so,
it was a major challenge for the team of the North Sea
Terminal (NTB) to handle the giant vessel on its very
first visit. But everything went very smoothly. NTB has
equipped six of its berths for large ships with 18 state-ofthe-art
container gantries of the so-called post-Panamax
class. The jibs of these extremely swift, efficient container
gantries have a range of 62.5 metres, making them ideal
for giants such as the “Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller”. The new
flagship of the Maersk fleet will now be a regular visitor in
Bremerhaven.
In future, the major shipping companies such as Maersk or
the French CMA CGM will increasingly be operating large
ships with energy-efficient engines. Fuel is expensive; the
more containers a ship can take, the lower the freight
costs per container. So size is a real competitive advantage
here. Experts expect that it won’t stop at 18,000 TEU either:
experiments are already in progress with 22,000 TEU ships.
Bremen’s ports: backbone of the economy
The ports are the basis for the economic strength of the
State of Bremen. 74,000 jobs depend on the port economy
and logistics. The container is also one of the factors
generating a division of labour between the city ports in
Bremen and Bremerhaven directly on the Weser estuary.
The ever larger container ships can scarcely sail up the
Weser to Bremen; as a result, work began in 1968 to construct
a quay directly at the estuary of the river. The first
container terminal in Bremerhaven started operating in
1971. The fourth container terminal was completed in
2008 – with no further scope for expansion as there is
simply no more space on the coast of Germany’s smallest
federal state. Together with Lower Saxony, Bremen has
therefore invested in the future of container transport in
Wilhelmshaven, where the Jade Weser Port has been constructed
with a natural water depth of 18 metres. That is
sufficient for even the biggest ships.
Bremerhaven is the focus above all for handling containers
and cars, together increasingly with components for offshore
wind farms on the high seas. The State of Bremen
wants to invest 200 million Euro in an offshore terminal to
meet the special requirements for the large-scale wind turbines
that weigh many tonnes. This will probably not start
operations until 2018.
The container has also drastically changed the appearance
of the port premises in Bremen. As in many other ports,
some of the port area has been converted into residential
and office buildings. But there are still many logistics companies
operating in the Überseestadt. Import containers
carrying raw coffee are brought up the Weser on inland
waterway vessels or by train to the handling companies
in the Holzhafen where special companies such as Vollers
or Müller Weser take it into storage on behalf of the coffee
industry. Other main items of cargo handled in Bremen’s
city ports include timber, cotton or natural stone, together
with malt, feedstuffs, molasses and grain. Iron and steel
also play a major role, together with the import and distribution
of oil products.
Wealth of know-how for shipping and shipbuilding
In future too, the ports will have to constantly adapt to the
changing needs of their customers. The port management
company bremenports intensively monitors the global
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