Maritime Trade and Transport - HWWI

4.3 Hubs and feeder transport in Europe
Increasing use has been made recently of the “hub and spoke strategy,” in which cargo is transported
on feeder ships from smaller ports to larger ports (hubs). Having arrived at the hubs,
the cargo is regrouped and then loaded onto larger ships along with goods from other ports.
Feeder ships are those that transport goods from the smaller ports, while large seagoing vessels
are primarily used for transporting goods over long distances. This makes it possible to
take advantage of economies of scale, because large volumes of goods mean lower average
transport costs. At the same time, the transport time required by the large ships is reduced,
since they do not have to call in at every single port. The hub and spoke strategy is also essential
because many of the smaller ports in the European trade area do not have the structures
necessary to permit entry by large vessels and container ships. The same strategy is used to
distribute arriving goods.
Feeder and ocean-going vessels run on fixed schedules between ports in many places, to
regionally distribute the containers that arrive at hubs like Hamburg, Marseilles or Rot ter -
dam. In short sea shipping27 , on the other hand, not only feeder vessels are used, but other
small ships that run between ports in the same geographical region. With the long EU sea
coast of 35,000 km and the many inland waterways in the EU, there are numerous ways of
utilizing short-distance ships for transporting cargo. These are being used more and more
frequently, with growth in short sea shipping between 1990 and 1998 amounting to 27%. 28
This is in part due to the fact that the escalating use of increasingly larger vessels in long-distance
shipping, with concurrent growth in cargo handling, means a continuous increase in the
cargo volumes that are transported further from the large ports. The European Commission
sees considerable potentials in short sea shipping and is implementing measures to foster it.
Unfortunately, it is still being hindered to an extent in the EU, e.g. through administrative
barriers. 29 New regularly scheduled runs between the hubs and the smaller ports could upgrade
certain port locations. In the course of this development, existing ports may develop into
new hubs. 30 This assessment applies primarily to ports that are affected by the expansion in
container handling.
Intraregional trade accounts for a considerable share of the total cargo handling of individual
ports. The share of European intraregional trade (total cargo handling in t) in Antwerp
in 2004 was 32%, in Marseilles 45% (2004), in Hamburg 41% (2003), in Rotterdam 47%
(2004), and in Tarragona 39,5% (2003). These five ports operate as hubs. In Antwerp and Rot -
terdam, the largest share of goods that do not originate from inner-European trade originate
27 The European Commission suggests the following definition [translation]: “Short sea shipping is the conveyance
of cargo and passengers between two ports located in the geographical region of Europe or between these
ports and ports in non-European countries that have a coastline on inland seas that border on Europe.”
This definition thus also includes EU shipping traffic with Norway, Iceland, and states bordering on the
Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic Sea (see EU 1999).
28 See EU (2001).
29 See EU (2001).
30 European Sea Ports Organisation (2004).
46 Berenberg Bank · HWWI: Strategy 2030 · No. 4