Hong Kong-based Cosco Shipping Ports Limited (CSPL) wants to acquire a minority stake in the HHLA Container Terminal Tollerort (CTT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hamburger Hafen und Logistik (HHLA).
Among HHLA’s deepsea terminals, CTT is considered to be the smallest. It comprises a Burchardkai facility and semi-automated Alternwerder terminal that operates four berths. eeSea, the maritime intelligence’s liner database, states that CTT currently serves 18 liner services, most of the European feeder strings. It also handles the Ocean Alliance’s NEU3 Asia-North Europe service that deploys 10 ships worth 13,000-19,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) capacity.
HHLA wants to strengthen its relationship with its Chinese counterpart. It also looks into the possibility of providing sustainable planning security for CTT to safeguard the volumes and employment of Hamburg port. With the help of HHLA’s network, CTT will continue to be open to all its customers.
A successful negotiation for Cosco means that a non-German operator has bought into the country’s main container gateway for the first time and would consolidate Cosco’s presence at Hamburg and in northern Europe. Piraeus has already become one of the East Mediterranean’s dominant hubs.
Cosco revealed that it has investments in Antwerp and Spain. In its first-quarter results for 2021, the shipper revealed that the volumes from its non-Chinese facilities accounted for almost 23 percent of the group throughput. Yet, HHLA recorded a volume decline of 7.2 percent in its three terminals at Hamburg during the same period.