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International shipping provides a range of advantages – and is unbeatable in connection with other modes of transports

Worldwide traffic of goods has been increasing steadily, driven by growing global economy and advancing networks. There are different modes of transports and routes for transporting a million tons of goods around the world: Truck, rail, ship and airplane. About 80 % of worldwide traded goods are actually transported by ship.

Advantages of international shipping

In many cases international shipping by sea is the most cost-efficient mode of transport. One ship can load a gigantic amount of goods at once, which makes the costs per item drop. Even a river barge for example is able to transport up to 150 truck loads. This relieves the roads, has a positive impact on the environment and lets costs drop. Furthermore ships belong to the safest modes of transports and thus are suitable for dangerous goods like oil and fuel. The use of containers makes loading and unloading as well as transshipping from road and rail onto ships easy. Steadily improving technology enables faster reloadings. This leads to time and cost savings.

German traffic junctions

Germany’s number one port is Hamburg. About nine million containers are handled here yearly, 9,000 ships are landing and almost 2,000 freight trains are operating here per week. In order to stay competitive in the future, the Elbe, the access to the port, has to be deepened. Through this big, fully loaded container ships will be able to pass and land at the port safely. But there are still some reworks to be made in the project plan concerning environmental protection. But the persons in charge are sure that construction will start soon.

A further important traffic junction in Germany for international shipping is Bremerhaven. It’s one of the most important intersections for automobile transports. About two million vehicles are handled here yearly. It provides storage space for 95,000 vehicles that are not only loaded there but also repaired, coverted or finished.

Inland water transportation

In Germany there are a lot of well-developped waterways whose capacity in regard to transport volumes is not fully used yet. To stay competitive, to avoid bottlenecks and to provide an unobstructed access to inland ports even for bigger ships waterways are expanded. And example for current projects is the deepening of the Rhine from St. Goar to Mainz. This deepening is supposed to enable fully loaded ships to travel even at low water level. Until now there have been problems in this regards on the busiest waterway in Europe.

Worldwide ferry routes

The advantage of ferries is that they carry goods to its destination even faster than freight or container ships. Special types of ferries are so-called Ro/Ro ferries that especially transport wheeled units. They are mostly operated on short sea routes, for example for shipments via the Baltic Sea to Scandinavia, to the Baltic states or to Russia. The plus is that the goods stay on the trucks and are shipped together with them while loaded. Thus reloading goods is not necessary. They can be transported on directly after arrival at the port of destination. But ferry routes do not only exist within Europe but also to overseas like Canada or West Africa for example.

Global shipping

The biggest ports of the world are predominantly located in the Asian region. Unchallenged front-runner for years is the port of Shanghai. Here, 36 million containers are handled yearly.  But Shanghai gets competition in its own country. Quingdao is already amongst the top 10 ports, but is currently being developped vastly in order to become the biggest shipping port in the world in 2020. Europe’s front-runner is the port of Rotterdam. 12 million containers are handled here yearly. And Rotterdam puts efforts on the port’s development, modernization and digitalization to defend its leading position.

The industry expert: A company that operates worldwide

Pfaff International operates shipments on rivers, canals, lakes and seas. The company scores with experience, expert knowledge, far-sightedness and a well-functioning agent network. Also and expecially at complex tasks. Pfaff thus belongs to the few medium-sized transport and logistics companies that has got outstanding expertise in the field of worldwide project logistics.

Read our blog: Container transports – Pfaff Logistic takes you to your destination safely

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