Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) has celebrated its 125th anniversary on 8th March 2010 with a festive reception in the town hall of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. HHLA’s direct predecessor HFLG (Hamburger Freihafen-Lagerhaus-Gesellschaft) was founded in Hamburg on 7 March 1885. In his celebration speech to around 500 guests from the worlds of politics and business, Klaus-Dieter Peters, Chairman of HHLA’s Executive Board, thanked all those who had assisted in the subsequent development of the Port of Hamburg and HHLA.
For 125 years Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) has actively witnessed and shaped the development of the Port of Hamburg. The company was already involved when by 1914 Hamburg rose to become the world’s third largest port after London and New York. Today HHLA with its cutting-edge handling terminals and facilities, an ecologically exemplary trans-port network, as well as complementary logistics services, stands for trend-setting intermeshing of global cargo flows between Europe and overseas, and especially via the Hamburg hub.
Ole von Beust, First Mayor of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg: “The port as the motor for Hamburg as a commercial centre would be nothing without the functioning logistics that are one of most important factors for a major hub. The handling and storage of goods in the Hanseatic City have long been inextricably linked with Hamburger Hafen and Logistik AG. Not many companies can look back on a successful history extending over 125 years. One salient reason for HHLA’s success is that it has always operated in a competitive environment and looked to the future.”
Axel Gedaschko, Minister of Economics and Employment: “The Port of Hamburg and HHLA are inextricably linked with one another. I congratulate the Executive Board and all staff of HHLA on the 125th birthday of their company, one so steeped in tradition. HHLA has in-variably showed itself open towards further developments. In the year 2010 it is a premium state-of-the-art service provider, making a powerful daily contribution to keeping the port com-petitive. I am quite sure that the port business community will succeed in securing and further expanding the potential of our port. Today as in the past, HHLA makes a crucial contribution. Not least, HHLA is a responsible employer that in the current economic climate has the inter-ests of its staff very much at heart. HHLA is one of the few exemplary companies in the field of in-service training during the crisis.”
Frank Horch, President of Hamburg Chamber of Commerce: “HHLA belongs to the port as the Alster and the ‘Michel’ do to Hamburg. Even in our merchant city so rich in tradition, for a company to achieve a 125th anniversary is no everyday occurrence. I congratulate the Execu-tive Board and the staff on this special birthday and link that with a confidence that HHLA will also remain the motor powering our port“.
Klaus-Dieter Peters, HHLA Executive Board Chairman: Hamburg has always particularly thrived when it could exploit its citizens’ competence, its economic power and the city’s favour-able location for the international exchange of goods. Naturally this was not a job only for commerce or one company. It was always a joint effort linking together the commitment of its citizens, politicians and companies.”
HHLA has in past decades experienced and survived many a storm, and its success is based on a host of intelligent policy decisions. It was deliberately launched by its founding fathers in 1885 as a public company with private shareholders, with the state providing areas and infra-structure against a share of the profits. Efficient private enterprise and long-term thinking in the direction of a strategy for the whole port were to be interwoven in this way. With the stock ex-change launch on 2 November 2007 and admittance soon afterwards to the MDax, the second-ranking German share index, we have now come full circle. “As at the founding of the com-pany, its private commercial components were stressed, and private capital mobilized, not just for the company, but also for expansion of the port,” said Peters.
On 7 March 1885 HHLA’s forerunner “Hamburger Freihafen-Lagerhaus-Gesellschaft” (HFLG) was founded to build the biggest and most modern logistics centre in the world in the new Freeport. Within a few decades, the world’s largest and most modern warehouse complex was built there. As the great warehouse site in the Freeport, that was an ideal foil for the new quay facilities in the port, Speicherstadt made a decisive contribution to Hamburg’s success as a world port. Today HHLA is sensitively handling the transformation of the Speicherstadt, under historic building protection, to an attractive downtown quarter between the counting-house dis-trict and HafenCity.
The modern Port of Hamburg port is a universal port where goods of virtually all types can be handled, transported and stored: Bulk goods, such as wheat or ore, but above all general car-goes of all kinds, well over 90 percent are now delivered in containers. HHLA handles around 60 percent of total port throughput. This mainly consists of containers, but also of project and heavy cargoes, tropical fruits like bananas, newsprint, cars for export, and coal and ore. HHLA also operates facilities for storage and contract logistics.
One of the Port of Hamburg’s great strengths is its excellent links with the European hinterland that HHLA will be systematically expanding in the coming years. Hamburg has always shone as a rail port. 70 percent of all goods on long-haul routes are transported by rail. HHLA intermodal companies play a very substantial role.
“As a vertically positioned logistics group with a regional focus on the logistics hub Hamburg plus its hinterland, today HHLA is well equipped for the future in core areas of the European logistics sector,” said Peters.