In mid-January, the French shipping company CMA CGM started operating a new feeder service between the Port of Hamburg and the Danish ports of Fredericia and Copenhagen, as well as Halmstad in Sweden and the Baltic Sea port of Szczecin in Poland.
The feeder ship Electron calls at container terminals at the Port of Hamburg once a week. The Electron cast off from the Port of Hamburg for the first time on 13 January 2010. The ship, chartered by the shipping company JR Shipping in Harlingen, measures 388 ft in length and 59.7 ft in width, has a load capacity of 658 TEU and provides 100 reefer connections. With a deadweight tonnage of 6,860 tons, the ship reaches a maximum draft of 23.3 ft and has a cruising speed of 17 knots.
Due to its favorable geographic location as well as exceptional infrastructure, the Port of Hamburg acts as a traffic hub between overseas markets and the Baltic Sea area. Sea-borne container traffic with Poland achieved a container turnover of more than 160,000 TEU in the first nine months of 2009. This made Poland the seventh most important trading partner of the Port of Hamburg in terms of sea-borne cargo transhipments. Hamburg offers roughly a dozen departures to the Polish ports every week. This northern European port on the Elbe has therefore the densest feeder network in the Baltic Sea area.
(www.portofhamburg.com)