From Yantian (鹽田) to Hamburg, world trade is in the doldrums and Christian Blauert, who heads the largest container terminal in Germany’s northern port of Hamburg, need only check the Web cams to knows things aren’t getting better.
On his computer he has access to a live-feed of pictures from Chinese harbors like Yantian showing mountains of empty containers, waiting for exports to pick up.
“The situation in the international port of Yantian is typical,” referring to the site near Hong Kong. “You can hardly see the full containers because the terminals are crowded with empties.”
The pictures illustrate that when the container ships come steaming into Hamburg from China, in six to seven weeks’ time after going round Africa to save paying Suez Canal transit fees, they will be carrying far fewer TV sets, bicycles, T-shirts and toothbrushes than at the same time last year.
At the HHLA (Hamburger Hafen und Logistik Aktiengesellschaft) Burchardkai terminal, where giant cranes on rails dominate the skyline, Blauert declines to say when business might pick up.
“It’s like navigating in the fog, you can only see what’s just ahead,” he says.
His firm expects turnover to be down by more than 10 percent this year because of the economic downturn and a number of HHLA’s 3,700 Hamburg employees will be facing short-time work as of this summer.
Axel Gedashko, economy minister in the city-state about 100km down river from the North Sea, does not mince his words: “The situation is dramatic,” he says.
“Trade in volume in the port of Hamburg is down by a quarter compared to last year” when nearly 10 million TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit), the figure used for calculating the number of containers shipped, went through the harbor, Gedashko says.
Shipping these days in Hamburg — Germany’s largest port and Europe’s second-largest after Rotterdam — is all about containers because 97 percent of goods are moved that way.
China was Hamburg’s most important trading partner last year, accounting for 32 percent in volume of the 140 million tonnes shipped through the port. Singapore came second, followed by Russia.
The world crisis “is hitting us badly because the port is at the center of logistics for northern Germany,” Gedashko says.
“And the situation here reflects the state of the world economy, not just in Hamburg and Germany, but for the whole of eastern Europe” because Hamburg, especially since the fall of the Iron Curtain, serves as the gateway for much of central and northern Europe, he says.
In this city-state of 1.8 million people, unemployment is up to 78,000, including 10,000 in the logistics sector, with at least 30,000 more on short-time, Gedashko says.
The city is worried. A poll by the Haspa bank showed 30 percent of firms connected with the harbor expect a bad year, 60 percent stagnation and just 6 percent think business will be good.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has approved a capital budget of US$31.28 billion for production expansion to meet long-term development needs during the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. The company’s board meeting yesterday approved the capital appropriation plan for purposes such as the installation of advanced technology capacity and fab construction, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. At an earnings conference last month, TSMC forecast that its capital expenditure for this year would be at the higher end of the US$52 billion to US$56 billion range it forecast in January in response to robust demand for 5G, AI and
RSS