The container trade between Rotterdam and the countries around the Baltic Sea, boomed in 2010. The volume rose with almost 50% to, for the first time in the Rotterdam ‘container history’, more than one million TEU (between 912,000 and 1,146,000 TEU (*)). Market leader Hamburg reported a 10% increase in their Baltic container trade over the same period. Their volumes are not (yet) published, but it is likely that they are a few percent above Rotterdam’s. The Baltic volume of Bremen/Bremerhaven amounts to 970,000 TEU in 2010.

The main driver of the rising volumes was the consolidation of especially the Asian deep sea liner services due to the 2009 crisis, in the port of Rotterdam. In the second half of 2010, because of the the high prices of heavy fuel oil and charter rates of feeder vessels started to gradually pushing back cargo to the northern German ports. 

Container trade between Rotterdam and Baltic countries (x 1,000 TEU)

  • 2009 2010 Difference +
  • Russia 283 446 57%
  • Finland 165 224 36%
  • Poland 105 141 35%
  • Estonia 14 20 46%
  • Lithuania 26 36 36%
  • Latvia 17 45 159%
  • Total 1 610 912 50%
  • Sweden (*) 160 234 46%
  • Total 2 770 1146 49%

 (*)  The source of the figures, the Dutch national bureau of statistics, CBS, does not allow to distinct Stockholm from the non-Baltic Swedish ports.