Freight transport on inland waterways in Saxony-Anhalt increased in 2021

According to the Statistical Office of Saxony-Anhalt, the amount of freight transported on inland waterways increased by 2.1 percent compared with 2020. The proportion of hazardous goods remained roughly the same at 13.9 percent.

Of all the goods handled, 59.5 percent were shipped to or from ports in Germany, while 40.5 percent travelled to or from ports outside the country. The figures for freight transport are based on the reports of loading and unloading from ships arriving in and leaving the ports. In 2021, 1.9 million tonnes of goods were received in the inland ports and transshipment terminals of Saxony-Anhalt and 4.5 million tonnes were shipped out.

Agricultural, forestry and fishery products were most frequently transported and amounted to 2.6 million tonnes and 40.9 percent of the total goods moved. The second most frequently transported category – ores, rocks, earths and other mining products – saw a fall of 7.0 percent. Around 1.2 million tonnes of these products were loaded and unloaded in 2021.

A total of 50.2 percent of all goods were loaded or unloaded in ports and transshipment terminals in the Elbe region and 49.8 percent in the Mittelland canal region. The volume of freight that passed through the Elbe region increased by a total of 0.7 percent. The ports in the Mittelland canal area saw a rise of 3.6 percent in the amount of goods loaded and unloaded.

There was an increase of 17.1 percent in the container traffic on the inland waterways of Saxony-Anhalt which brought the figure to 34,081 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units). The proportion of containers travelling through the ports and transshipment terminals in the Elbe region more than doubled to 13,058 TEUs.

A TEU is a standardised international unit for counting containers of different sizes. It is based on an ISO container approximately 6 metres long.

You can find more information on the subject of transport on the website of the Statistical Office of Saxony-Anhalt.

Information about the long time series and basic data on the subject of inland shipping can be obtained from the table of freight transport statistics for inland shipping (46321) in the GENESIS-Online database.

Source: statistik.sachsen-anhalt.de