Maritime Trade and Transport - HWWI

Box 3
Jade-Weser-Port 1
Germany’s first deepwater port, the JadeWeserPort, is currently being built in Wilhelmshaven
in Lower Saxony. The JadeWeserPort, whose container terminals are to go
into operation by 2010, will be a port of call for future giants of the sea with a length of
up to 430 m, a draft of up to 16.5 m, and a capacity of more than 8,000 TEU (postpanamax
container ships). Container ships of this new generation will soon be able to
call at the JadeWeserPort, only 23 sea miles from the open sea, regardless of the tides.
The planned quay length of the terminal is 1,725 m, enough to permit four large container
ships to be loaded or unloaded at the same time with up to 17 container bridges.
The terminal will cover an area of 120 ha and, at full capacity, will be able to handle
2.7 mn TEU annually. When this complete capacity has been reached in 2020, 1,000
new jobs are expected to have been created right at the port, and an additional 1,000
with other local logistics companies. 2
Planning for the JadeWeserPort began in 2001, originally as a project to be conducted
jointly by the federal states of Hamburg, Bremen and Lower Saxony. In addition to
Lower Saxony, where the port is located, Hamburg and Bremen also expect positive economic
effects through this port construction in Wilhelmshaven, due to their proximity
to it. In 2002, however, Hamburg decided to withdraw from the financing of the new
port construction, having decided that its priorities had to be on investments in the
Hamburg port as well as the deepening of the Elbe navigation channel, to support deve -
lopment of the Hamburg harbor. 3 Bremen and Lower Saxony are jointly financing the
approximately 670 million euros for infrastructure and transport links for the Jade -
Weser Port. The investments for the suprastructure (container bridges, industrial trucks,
ground stabilization and reinforcement, buildings, etc.) amounting to approximately
300 million euros will be made by the operating companies, who will be granted a concession
for 40 years. APM Terminals International has a 30% interest in EUROGATE
Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven GmbH, to be established for port operations, and
will finance the same share of the investments in the suprastructure, while EURO -
GATE will be responsible for the remaining 70%.
Basic capacity utilization of the new port was not yet certain in 2002. After world
trade slumped following the weak economy of 2001, it was feared that the Jade Weser -
Port could become a “white elephant.” 4 Especially in the case of economic slumps, there
is reason to fear that the giant container ships, for which the JadeWeserPort was being
built, would be the first to be running under capacity. Should this happen, the Jade -
WeserPort would no longer be the port of call for large vessels, but would be competing
with Hamburg for the handling of smaller cargo ships. Slumps in international trade
will in all probability be temporary in the future, too, and would therefore only lead to
a decline in the volume of handled cargo for a limited period of time. Long-term, in
view of the lasting expansion in world trade that is expected, it is assumed that the sea
cargo market will continue to expand and that both the JadeWeserPort and Hamburg
harbor will profit from this.
1 See www.jadeweserport.de.
2 See Geisler (2006).
3 See N.N. (2004a).
4 See Hollmann (2002).
Berenberg Bank · HWWI: Strategy 2030 · No. 4
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