Trading in Hamburg - docklands and container terminals

Hamburg is home to the largest self-contained warehouse complex in the world. Part of the city is a free port, where goods can be traded tax-free. When visiting the free port area, you're transported into another world - with more than a whiff of the old way of doing things. Huge old warehouses are filled with everything from antique carpets to coffee and exotic spices. As one of the warehouse workers explains: "This is the largest carpet warehouse in the world - larger even than Tehran."

This trade is, and always has been, enormously important for Hamburg's prosperity. The word "Pfeffersack" - a sack of pepper - is still used today as a colloquial way of describing the rich merchants of Hamburg, in reference to the spices which traditionally helped to build up their wealth.

Like all ports, Hamburg has had to adapt to the modern world. It is now one of the most important container terminals in the world, alongside Hong Kong and Singapore. It acts as a distribution point, not just for destinations in Germany, but for the whole of Europe.

The size of the container terminal - covering an area larger than the state of Monaco - is daunting. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with constant loading and unloading where time is of the essence. On average, one container is unloaded every 45 seconds. It used to be easy for containers to be mislaid, with catastrophic consequences - for example, a fork-lift driver could misread the aisle and position where the container was supposed to be stored. As Volker Jahnke, who works for the container terminal, explains: "It was a huge effort to find it. Sometimes it would not be found for months, because it was buried under some other containers."

In an attempt to minimise such problems, a highly sophisticated scanning system, using satellite and laser technology, has now been installed to keep tabs on every container in the entire terminal. In Volker Jahnke's words: "If somebody comes and puts the container in 5G instead of 4G, the system corrects the error automatically."

Links:

Docklands Museum
Extension of the Museum of Work, which concentrates on labour in the docklands. In English and German.

Spice Museum
Another museum located in the docklands - the Hamburg Spice Museum. In English and German.