Angela Titzrath does not hesitate when asked how important the planned new A26 Ost motorway is for the operation of the port. “I cannot confirm that the A26 is not necessary for the port, on the contrary,” said the CEO of the port and logistics group HHLA on Thursday when the annual figures were presented. Titzrath also gave a clear answer to the question of whether, in view of the scarce federal funds, preference should be given to the A26 East on the southern edge of the port or a new crossing of the Köhlbrand further north: “The Port of Hamburg needs both.”
The discussion flared up again this week after the SPD politician Bettina Hagedorn had questioned the financing of around two billion euros for the A26 East and up to five billion euros for a new crossing of the Köhlbrand to replace the aging bridge. Hagedorn is Deputy Chair of the Bundestag Budget Committee. At the same event in the Patriotic Society, Gunther Bonz, President of the Hamburg Port Business Association (UVHH), said that the A26 is not necessarily needed to relieve port traffic, but above all for the larger Hamburg transport system as a whole.
For the HHLA boss, the debates about the transport routes in and around Hamburg are just one of a number of political, technological and economic construction sites. In the midst of brilliant world crises such as the pandemic, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and climate change, Titzrath and her board of directors are completely restructuring the group, which is 69 percent owned by the city of Hamburg. Internationally, HHLA employed 6,650 people in 2022, around 1,800 of them in Hamburg.
Management has been working for years to turn HHLA into an integrated European logistics group: with new holdings in terminals such as in Trieste, Italy, or in Tallinn, Estonia, with constant expansion of the European rail freight network at the Metrans subsidiary, with the strengthening of the international Connections, for example, through the planned minority share of the Chinese state-owned maritime group Cosco in the Hamburg container terminal in Tollerort. However, HHLA is still waiting for approval of the Chinese stake of 24.9 percent from the Federal Ministry of Economics.
In the past year, HHLA recorded an increase in sales of 7.7 percent to around EUR 1.6 billion, an operating profit (EBIT) that fell by 3.4 percent to EUR 220 million and container throughput that fell by 7.9 percent to around 6 .4 million container units (TEU), all figures compared to 2021. The sharp drop in container throughput is also related to the closure of the HHLA terminal in Odessa, Ukraine. At HHLA’s three Hamburg container terminals, throughput fell by around four percent to around 6.1 million TEU, also due to the consequences of the war and the pandemic. For 2022, HHLA wants to pay the city of Hamburg around 44 million euros in foreign exchange.
“HHLA achieved a good result and thus demonstrated its efficiency,” said Titzrath. “We now have another year ahead of us that brings with it a lot of uncertainties.” For this year, the Management Board expects sales at the level of 2022 and an operating result of between 160 and 190 million euros. HHLA intends to continue to hold on to the terminal in Odessa. A land bridge between Trieste and Ukraine helped to supply the country with relief supplies and export agricultural products such as sunflower seeds and oil. In turn, the port of Odessa contributes to the “grain bridge” out of Ukraine.
