The office of Erhard Meller, Managing Director of Hansaport, provides a nice view of Hansaport and the vessels coming in to port to unload coal and ores.
On this mid-September morning, one of the world’s largest bulk carriers, AMY N, owned and operated by Neu Seeschiffahrt (Los Angeles) is in Hamburg. Hansaport is discharging the largest amount of bulk cargo ever to arrive in one shipment. The terminal ships some 65% of the coal and iron ore to the steel manufacturing plants of Salzgitter AG. In total there are some 1,000 metres of quay space and the port handles some 13 million tonnes of dry bulk cargo per year.
“We have no restrictions on the size of vessels calling at our port,” says Erhard Meller, “apart from the maximum 15.1 metres of draft. Many of the larger ships come in at high tide. In addition we have space for expansion. All the dry bulk going in the direction of Salzgitter goes by train and we have some 15 kilometres of track on our area to facilitate efficient handling of trains – just one train may be up to 600 metres long and the weight of such a train is an impressive 6,500 tonnes. We can handle up to 15 trains per day.”
The port is arranged so that all bulk cargoes are transferred by conveyor belt to a storage area and from there loaded on to either rail carriges or barges or smaller vessels for river transport on the River Elbe.