Four new berths safeguard the future of a world-class port

Bremerhaven gets ready to face the competition with Container-Terminal 4
No other sector of the economy in the Federal Land of Bremen currently boasts stronger growth than the port and logistics business. This is due first and foremost to the dynamic development in container throughput. With an annual volume of 5.5 million containers (TEU) in 2008, the modern terminal facilities in Bremerhaven ranked amongst the largest and most efficient in Europe – and the signs are set for further growth.

The international port on the mouth of the Weser is one of the sectors which benefits from the trend towards globalisation. The region has long since profited from the above average growth in cargo handling. Compared with 1998, when Wilhelm Kaisen Container-Terminal handled 1.77 million TEU, the number of containers now imported and exported through the seaport has risen by more than 100 per cent.

The terminal is once again preparing to cope with a substantial expansion in container business. In an age of intensive division of industrial labour and newly emerging markets for products from all over the world, transport pundits forecast that the volume of standardised containers handled in Bremerhaven will double once again over the next eight to ten years.

Both shipowners and forwarders have great hopes of the flourishing North German port and logistics hub. Its international customers count on the rapid expansion of the quay and working area at the terminal. At the moment, the 3237-metre long container quay on the River Weser has ten berths for mega-container vessels. In order to provide the urgently required space for these huge ships, bremenports, the port management company, has already extended the quay by 340 metres. Construction phase Container-Terminal (CT) IIIa, however, was merely the prelude to the much more difficult tour de force facing the planning engineers and finance experts – the construction of CT 4.

Untill 2008, bremenports had again extend the terminal to the north, adding a further approx. 1700 metres to what is already the world’s longest quay. Construction work on the 500-million euro undertaking began in June 2004. Container-Terminal 4 involved the construction of four new berths. This is the most ambitious port construction task ever to be tackled by the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen – and also the largest investment project on the German coast.

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