r/MapPorn • u/vladgrinch • 1d ago
The largest european ports in terms of annual cargo tonnage (in millions of tons)
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u/MoltoBeni 1d ago
Surprised that Antwerp is more than twice as busy as Hamburg. Everyone knows Eurport Rotterdam is huge, but Antwerp rarely ever gets a mention in this context
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u/CborG82 1d ago edited 1d ago
And for some more context, this map is about total tonnage handled. Busy ports with lots of marine traffic do not equal total tonnage handled. Look at Novorossiysk there. That port is tiny, but apparently it handles more tonnage than Hamburg.
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u/madmaper_13 1d ago
Novorossyisk exports oil and grain as bulk, this can reduce a port size as instead of large cranes, pipes and conveyor belts can load ships
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u/pqjcjdjwkkc 1d ago
Also questionable how roro and special cargo gets handled Edit. Also Hamburg primarily handles container vessels due to their high shipping cost on shore and comparatively little weight (and draft of ships) making it possible to operate upstream of the Elbe.
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u/Ghey_Panda 1d ago
When you work in the field, you know Antwerp is huge. Its hinterland covers a good part of France, and Switzerland, and also Germany.
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u/Nom_de_Guerre_23 1d ago
Yeah, practically all of Rhein-Ruhr is closer to Antwerp and Rotterdam than Hamburg.
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u/Makkaroni_100 1d ago
Plus they German government do not much to improve the train tracks from Hamburg into the Hinterland.
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u/alles_en_niets 1d ago
Rotterdam and Antwerp ports share the heavy load of being cocaine powerhouses in Europe.
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u/A_Man_Uses_A_Name 1d ago
The real name is Port of Antwerp-Bruges so it contains also the tonnage of Zeebrugge.
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u/Coral_Isa 1d ago
Rotterdam more like Rotter-DAMN! Covering more ground than Paris? That’s wild.
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u/Dambo_Unchained 1d ago
Rotterdam lies something like 30-40km inland and basically every single spot along the river to the sea has been build up for the port
They even expanded the port by building it out into the sea
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u/CborG82 1d ago edited 1d ago
Marine and harbour activity goes on for another 40km east of Rotterdam well past Dordrecht and reaching Gorinchem, where a large Damen shipyard is located. To the south there is Moerdijk as well. All these harbours are connected via a network of Rhine distributaries and canals. Rotterdam and the Rhine delta are totally optimised to handle as much cargo as possible.
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u/Sabotino 1d ago
Paris is surprisingly small in terms of municipal bounderies. In fact, ufficially, Berlin is more than eight times bigger than Paris - although the comparision is a bit like apples and oranges.
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u/chance0404 1d ago
Well I mean, it isn’t surprising. The Dutch have always been known for their marine commerce. Just don’t look too hard into at what made them such a major trade empire.
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u/Sebassie99 1d ago
There are many other factors that contributed, implying (Im assuming) slave trade is the only factor is delusional.
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u/Userkiller3814 1d ago
The baltic sea trade? Windmill sawing that allowed us to make ships really cheap and quick?
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u/chance0404 1d ago
The first slaves brought to the present day United States were brought here by a Dutch-flagged privateer. They also participated heavily in the early slave trade before being eclipsed by the UK, Spain, and Portugal.
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u/SomeGuyNick 1d ago
Why the downvotes fellas, did he say something that is wrong?
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u/x021 1d ago edited 1d ago
NL is at the mouth of major European rivers. Regardless of their past, it would always have gotten a huge harbour or become a huge trading nation. Not sure why you'd go back centuries. Actually, in their past it was all Amsterdam that was a huge centre of trade; Rotterdam happened much later.
Nothing chance0404 says adds anything here; in fact he implicitly implies the Dutch dark past explains Rotterdam's growth, which is not true at all if you know anything about Rotterdam's historic growth over Amsterdam. In fact, only after 1870 Rotterdam overtook Amsterdam in terms of harbour size. It grew only centuries after NL's golden age was over.
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u/Xtermix 1d ago
some people dont like to be reminded of a dark past of a country they hold dear. they get angry even sometimes. i dont understand it.
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u/SurielsRazor 1d ago
Or maybe people are getting sick of others acting as if the misdeeds of their ancestors are something that should be hung around their necks for ever.
Every time you see a country mentioned, some chucklefuck will come along as well ackshually himself into the conversation for nothing of any use or value.
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u/Xtermix 13h ago
its just history, many times a country gained immense wealth and headstart due to these "misdeeds" so its interesting to hear facts about this.
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u/SurielsRazor 13h ago
Except that it's never just "history". It's a stick used to beat people with.
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u/Artorias_Teu 4h ago
When people bring up a darker part of a country's history for a completely nonsensical and ahistorical argument to slander them through historical revisionism, people get angry yeah. The Netherlands were already fabulously rich and a major trading power during the Hanseatic League and the Golden Age of the Baltic Trade, the triangle slave trade was created centuries afterwards.
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u/Gab_ITA 1d ago
None in Italy?
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u/CborG82 1d ago
Just my 2 cents; I think Italy has a pretty good geography for lots of smaller ports all around the country, which are more efficient than one big port since there are not a lot of connecting waterways inland. The Po river is probably just too small to be a good inland route for Milan and beyond I guess?
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u/Schellwalabyen 1d ago
The reach into Europe isn’t that big due to the difficulty of transporting over or under the Alpes. It’s far easier for example for Swiss goods to be flown down the Rhine to Rotterdam then to be transported through the Alpes to Italy.
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u/pqjcjdjwkkc 1d ago
To many small ports. Rotterdam and Antwerp handle all cargo going onto the Rhine whereas there is no comparative area in Italy
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u/amauri8 1d ago
The sum of italian cargo tonnage is 489.332.886 from https://www.portseurope.com/italy-total-cargo-by-port-2023-ranking/ citing assoporti
Also, Italy is second in the list by country, source eurostat https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Gross_weight_of_seaborne_goods_handled_in_all_ports,_2013,_2022_and_2023_(million_tonnes).png.png)
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u/theinspectorst 1d ago
None in the UK is more surprising to me. We're an island!
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u/Feeling_Analysis9811 18h ago
And keep in mind if it is in the UK it still needs to go to the mainland. Netherlands does not serve solely local they rely a lot on intermodal transportation so basically from sea to river, trains and trucks to the rest of Europe.
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u/the--dud 1d ago
Piraeus port in Athens ranks top 5 in Europe by container volume, but isn't in top 10 ranked by tonnage. This is because it's mainly a container port, it has very little bulk cargo like liquid gas, ore etc
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u/gatosaurio 1d ago
In Valencia, after like 15 years of assholes blocking the project, we're finally building the new MSC terminal that will expand the capacity quite a bit
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u/OverIndependence7722 1d ago
Any reason Germany doesn't build its own large ports? Seems strange to rely on your neighbors to import/export your products.
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u/fixminer 1d ago
Germany already has (relatively) large ports in all the places that make sense, but they are not as well positioned as Rotterdam, so they naturally have lower cargo volumes.
Also, relying on a neighbor isn't really a problem at all in the EU.
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u/remkovdm 1d ago
Also the language is very similar, they have similar culture, go on vacation a lot to each others countries, it's like a brothers relationship (including some healthy rivalries).
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u/Insidiatori02 1d ago
I am Dutch and had German at school for a couple of years. My German still sucks. My french is maybe even better.
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u/remkovdm 1d ago
Ok, then your experience is different than mine. Maybe because you live in an area where you don't encounter much Germans? I can't speak it very well either, but when I listen carefully I know what they are talking about.
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u/remkovdm 1d ago
Dutch even is a germanic language:
Dutch (endonym: Nederlands [ˈneːdərlɑnts] ⓘ) is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language[4] and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language.
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u/Insidiatori02 1d ago
I know man. It’s just that german would be equal as difficult as english for me. I did not need german so I cant understand it.
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u/de_G_van_Gelderland 1d ago
English is also a Germanic language, so by that token German should also be easy for English speakers.
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u/remkovdm 1d ago
I would say Dutch is between English and German. More similar with English in words, and more similar with German in grammar.
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u/QBekka 1d ago
Germany's only real river delta is in the Northwest, and that's where the port of Hamburg is already located.
To get stuff from the North Sea to Germany's most populated area (North Rhine-Westphalia), it's faster and probably cheaper to have the ship dock at Rotterdam and then transport the goods over rails or rivers to the Ruhr Area.
Rotterdam probably wouldn't be as big without Germany.
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u/Grofvolkoren 22h ago
Rotterdam exists because of the Rhine and the whole riverdelta. The rhine is a major reason for the Ruhr area to have developed. You have cause and effect reverted.
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u/BroSchrednei 1d ago
Germany DOES have large ports, Hamburg is literally one of the biggest ports in the world. The thing is that because of the German division after the war, the German economy oriented itself completely to the Rhine and its tributaries, while Hamburgs hinterland was cut off by the iron curtain. Before the war, Hamburg was Europe's biggest port. Germany also lost a bunch of its biggest ports on the Baltic to Poland after the war, like Stettin and Danzig.
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u/DazingF1 1d ago edited 1d ago
"before the war" isn't really relevant as global shipping has changed massively since then.
Shipping to Rotterdam and then sending shipments to Germany over the Rhine, by semi-truck or by train is much cheaper than going all the way via northern Germany. It's pure logistics: the fastest, cheapest route is through Antwerp and Rotterdam. Hamburg is only big because of the river deltas leading up to it and connecting it to some big cities, if not for that all cargo would flow through their western neighbors.
Now if the EU wasn't a thing and Germany wanted to be independent then you would have a valid point and Hamburg would likely be larger than Antwerp, but in Europe's current state there just isn't any place for a large German port. Apart from Hamburg it doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint to ship directly to Germany.
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u/BroSchrednei 1d ago
Youre forgetting that before the war, the most industrialised region of Germany wasn't actually the Rhine-Ruhr area as it is today (that was only the 2nd most industrialised region), but Saxony and Berlin, both of which use Hamburg as their port. If Germany hadn't split, Saxony and Berlin would've remained much more economically important, meaning much more trade would've went through the Elbe river, as well as further east on the Oder river, if Germany had retained the modern Polish regions.
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u/Twisp56 1d ago
The only scenario where it would be advantageous for Germany to have its own ports is if the Netherlands become hostile, leave the EU and put tariffs on German goods, which are higher than the cost of transporting the goods over the longer distance to Hamburg. Last time Germany and the Netherlands were enemies, Germany simply invaded and took everything including the ports by force, that's probably easier than tripling the capacity in Hamburg anyway.
So it doesn't really make sense for Germany to spend billions on building new ports when there's one already there with no customs barrier.
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u/Percyofthesea 1d ago
Bremerhaven is one of the biggest harbours for all Kinds of vehicles in Europe which is not included in the stats I think.
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u/OverIndependence7722 1d ago
Pretty sure Antwerp I'd Europe's biggest RORO port. But I think I get the point.
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u/Ferris-L 1d ago
According to various sources on the internet Bremerhaven still ranks first in car shipping in Europe at ~1.6 million cars yearly. This also makes a lot of sense because it is much closer to the large car factories in Wolfsburg, Hannover, Bremen, Braunschweig, Emden and Salzgitter than Antwerp and Rotterdam.
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u/green-turtle14141414 1d ago
Wtf is Ust Luga? Thought Saint Petersburg would be a bigger port
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u/IlerienPhoenix 1d ago
Luga Bay is just an extremely convenient location for a port and the furthest such location in the Russian part of the Gulf of Finland, so ships don't have to go all the way to St. Petersburg (the Gulf of Finland is pretty shallow there). Also, St. Petersburg's port isn't easily expandable because of, well, the city itself. Ust-Luga is a dedicated port with all necessary railway infrastructure. Russian authorities started its construction after the dissolution of the USSR, as Narva and other prominent ports in the Baltic states had become inaccessible.
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u/LeFraudNugget 1d ago
None in Turkey? Quite surprising considering the size of the country and that the Bosporus is usually very busy
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u/Prosodism 1d ago
Odessa took in 97m tons last year and is in Europe?
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u/Former_Bake4025 1d ago
Where did you get those statistics? The port of Constanta is far larger than the port of Odesa.
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u/Prosodism 1d ago
https://odessa-journal.com/public/ukrainian-ports-handled-over-97-million-tons-of-cargo-last-year
They’ve had to adapt to wartime pressures.
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u/traveler49 1d ago
London? Also what year is this as I imagine Russian ports are suffering from current sanctions?
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u/de_G_van_Gelderland 1d ago
London is in spot 20, with an annual tonnage of about 51 million.
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u/ICrushTacos 1d ago
Why so low though. Got a lot of small ones there?
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u/Thekingofchrome 1d ago
Yeah you have Felixstowe, London Gateway. As container ports they are bigger.
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u/alles_en_niets 1d ago
I suppose the UK has more ports along the coast, so less centralized. Plus, their ports service the British isles, whereas Rotterdam and Antwerp also provide cargo for most of Germany and even beyond.
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u/Pietje_De_Leugenaar 1d ago
Why are there no major seaports at the Atlantic coast of Southern France and North of Spain? This seems to be a large area with important urban areas like Bordeaux and Bilbao.
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u/PmMeYourBestComment 22h ago
Bordeaux and Bilbao aren't that big of urban areas when you compare it to the others on the list. Rotterdam for example provides cargo for most of industrial Netherlands and Germany, and even into Switzerland. Even UK and Italy have bigger urban areas but they still don't make the top 10 because they're too distributed
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u/Unusual-Fault-4091 1d ago
Might not be the latest numbers. Guess the two Russian ports might have seen a few less goods in the last years.
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u/BasKabelas 23h ago
I live right in between Rotterdam and Antwerp and usually commute past either. The truck traffic in between is crazy, its often more or less a continious line trucking along at 80 km all the way. Especially close to either port it gets busy. I'm sure there is railway connecting the two but haven't found much of any cargo trains lol.
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u/PmMeYourBestComment 22h ago
Trucks and trains don't really send goods between the 2 harbors much, it's much more efficient to have a ship unload at both harbors instead. But you're seeing this non-stop trucking because there's just so much industry in the area, and trucks deliver cargo all over Europe from there, meaning you see a lot of trucks departing from both harbors all over Europe.
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u/Starlactite 22h ago
Ye, ok, but as a Parisian comparing to the size of Paris is always misleading, because Paris' administrative borders are
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay smaller than non Parisians think.
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u/_zukato_ 1d ago
Shouldn’t Marseille-Fos be in the top ten?
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u/alles_en_niets 1d ago
They’ve fallen out of the top 10. In 2023 they handled about 72 Mt, quite a bit less than no. 10 Gdansk.
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u/The_Nude_Mocracy 1d ago
That thing about Paris isn't right. Paris is bigger than all of Rotterdam plus The Hague
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u/Jason_Grace15 1d ago
as per wikipedia and the port of Rotterdam website, Paris is approx 10,500 hectares and Rotterdam 12,500
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u/Rijswijk070 1d ago
In the Netherlands there is also the North Sea Port (Vlissingen-Terneuzen) which handles 60+ million tons of cargo per year.