Friday, November 13, 2026
The news that moves freight
Ocean Nov 13, 2026 · 7 min read

HHLA’s Hamburg volumes fall faster as automation drags

Hamburg is losing boxes to its own rebuild, and Q3 was the worst stretch yet

HHLA, Hamburg’s biggest container terminal operator, handled 4.200m TEU at its Hamburg terminals in January to September 2026. TEU means twenty-foot equivalent unit, the standard way to count containers. That is 7.7% fewer than the 4.548m TEU of a year earlier. Across the whole group, including terminals abroad, throughput fell 7.3% to 4.446m TEU. The company published the figures on 12 November.

Profit fell much harder than volume. Group EBIT, short for earnings before interest and tax and a standard measure of operating profit, dropped 30.7% to €81.2m. In the container segment, EBIT fell 51.3% to €29.4m. Group revenue still rose 3.3% to €1,375.1m, helped by the rail and road business.

Our view is simple. Hamburg’s problem this year is mostly made inside its own terminal gates. It is not mainly a weak market. And the numbers say it got worse in the third quarter, not better. Forwarders should treat HHLA’s Hamburg quays as a port under construction through the winter.

What HHLA itself blames

HHLA does not hide the cause. Its nine-month report says Hamburg volumes were “particularly affected by the ongoing modernisation measures at the Hamburg terminals”.

Two projects stand out in that report. At the Burchardkai terminal (CTB), HHLA is modernising and bringing in AGVs. AGVs are automated guided vehicles: driverless trucks that carry boxes between ship and stack. HHLA says this cut productivity and added cost. At the Altenwerder terminal (CTA), it is replacing gantry cranes, the large cranes that run along the stacking yard.

HHLA lists other causes too. Harsh winter weather hit the start of the year. Strikes disrupted the third quarter. Overseas trade with North America and the Far East fell, especially China. Shifts in trade flows linked to geopolitical tensions also played a part.

Costs are rising while volume falls. HHLA says container segment costs rose 4.5%. It names wage settlements, extra staff hired from the port’s labour pool, higher depreciation and dearer fuel. The container EBIT margin, meaning operating profit as a share of revenue, fell to 4.6% from 9.4%. In plain terms, HHLA now keeps less than five cents of operating profit from each euro of container revenue.

HHLA’s terminals outside Germany did better, but not by much. They handled 246,000 TEU, down 1.6%. HHLA cites Estonia’s weak economy and Mediterranean re-routings. It also says that “Odessa in fact came to a virtual standstill in the third quarter.” Those terminals are small next to Hamburg, which carries almost all of the group’s volume.

Some of these causes are outside anyone’s control. But they hit all North European ports, and not all of them lost volume. That is the key comparison.

Rotterdam held steady while Hamburg slipped

Rotterdam’s container throughput in TEU was up 0.1% in the first nine months of 2026, AJOT reported on 16 October, citing the port. Rotterdam had its own problems. Its transshipment volume, meaning boxes moved from one ship to another without leaving the port, fell 20%. AJOT’s report put that down to long-standing capacity limits at Rotterdam’s deep-sea terminals, which push more cargo to other ports and free up space for hinterland flows.

So the same weather, the same geopolitical disruption and the same weak China trade left Rotterdam flat. Over that period, Hamburg’s HHLA terminals lost 7.7%. We think the difference is mostly HHLA’s own rebuild.

HHLA’s feeder business points the same way. Feeders are the smaller ships that carry boxes on from Hamburg to the Baltic, Scandinavia and the UK. Feeders made up 18.9% of HHLA’s seaborne handling in the nine months, down from 19.6%. HHLA says feeder volumes fell, led by Scandinavia, Estonia and the UK. Feeder cargo can switch hub easily. When a hub slows down, it is often the first cargo to go.

The trend got worse in the third quarter

HHLA’s report gives nine-month totals only. But it published half-year figures in August. Subtracting one from the other gives the third quarter on its own. These are our calculations, from HHLA’s published numbers.

At the half-year, AJOT reported, Hamburg throughput was 2.786m TEU, down 7.3% from 3.006m. Take that from the nine-month figures and Hamburg handled about 1.414m TEU in Q3 2026. The year before, it handled about 1.542m. That is a fall of roughly 8.3% in the third quarter, deeper than in the first half.

The group shows the same pattern. Group throughput was 2.959m TEU at the half-year, down 6.7%. That leaves about 1.487m TEU for Q3, against about 1.626m a year earlier. That is a fall of about 8.5%.

Profit tells the same story. Group EBIT was €51.3m at the half-year. So Q3 group EBIT was about €29.9m. In August, Eijsink said: “The modernisation of our container terminals in Hamburg is a key investment in the future viability of HHLA.” We don’t argue with the investment. But three months later, the bill is still growing.

The forecasts show it as well. On 20 July HHLA cut its 2026 group EBIT forecast from €175–195m to €150–170m, its forecast page shows. On 22 October it cut again, to €115–135m. It also changed its throughput forecast from a “slight decrease” to a “significant decrease”. It cut planned group spending from €430–480m to €380–430m.

HHLA’s message for the rest of the year is narrow. “In the fourth quarter, the focus is on stabilising our automated processes,” Eijsink says in the nine-month report. That is a company trying to get its own systems working, not one getting ready to grow.

It is also cleaning up. HHLA booked €21.4m of non-cash impairments, meaning write-downs in the value of assets, on two units, HHLA Sky and omoqo, FreshPlaza reported. omoqo stopped trading on 30 September. HHLA Sky was sold at the end of October.

What this means on the quay

The detail that should worry forwarders most is buried in the revenue line. HHLA says container revenue, down only 0.7% to €637.2m, was cushioned by storage fees from longer dwell times. Dwell time is how long a box sits on the terminal before it leaves. Longer dwell means slower turnaround. And somebody pays the storage.

In practice, we expect forwarders using HHLA’s Hamburg terminals this winter to face more of the same:

  • Plan more buffer days between vessel arrival and pick-up, and check free-time terms in your contracts before boxes sit.
  • Watch for vessel schedule changes and cut-off shifts at CTB in particular, where the AGV roll-out is happening.
  • For time-sensitive cargo, price an alternative via Rotterdam or Antwerp, and compare total landed time, not just ocean freight.
  • For Baltic and Scandinavian feeder cargo, ask your carrier which hub it is really using. That cargo has already been moving away from Hamburg.

There is a bright spot. HHLA’s rail and road arm held up. Intermodal (moving containers inland by rail and truck) carried 1.509m TEU, up 0.5%. Rail alone was 1.308m TEU, up 0.6%. Intermodal EBIT rose 2.3% to €78.0m, according to FreshPlaza. Once a box is off the quay, the rail network into Central and Eastern Europe is still working. The weak spot is the terminal.

Our call for the rest of 2026

HHLA handled 6.295m TEU across the group in 2025, its forecast page shows. Through September it had handled 4.798m TEU the year before, so Q4 2025 was about 1.497m TEU. If Q4 2026 falls at the Q3 rate of about 8.5%, the group ends the year near 5.82m TEU. Even with a modest recovery, it is hard to see it above 5.9m.

Our prediction: when HHLA publishes its full-year 2026 figures in spring 2027, group container throughput will be below 5.9m TEU, a fall of more than 6% on 2025.

We also expect profit to land at the bottom of the new range. To hit even the €115m floor, HHLA needs about €33.8m of group EBIT in Q4, by our sums. That is more than the roughly €29.9m it made in Q3. Our call is that full-year 2026 group EBIT comes in below €125m, in the bottom half of the October forecast.

For forwarders, the practical call is shorter. We expect HHLA’s Hamburg terminals to stay slower and less predictable than Rotterdam through at least the end of Q1 2027, until the automation work at Burchardkai is running smoothly.

Sources

Read us on Google? Add Forwarder News as a preferred source to see more of our stories in Top Stories.