Flagging European industry clouds Rotterdam’s rising container volume

Rotterdam faced exceptional congestion in the first half of the year as rising volumes — including the arrival of more than 100 ships with container exchanges of 12,000 TEUs — kept operations at the port under pressure, the Dutch hub said Tuesday.

But a deeper concern for Rotterdam is the weakening competitive position of European industry that directly impacts the integrated industrial cluster of the port.

“In recent months, we as a port have been confronted with economic uncertainties, lagging investments and disruptions in supply chains,” Boudewijn Siemons, CEO of the Port of Rotterdam Authority, said in a first-half results statement.

The current investment climate in the Netherlands is causing companies to postpone or cancel investments, including those in sustainability, while at the same time production is increasing in countries outside Europe where conditions are more favorable, the port statement noted.

“In these turbulent times, as a port we must ensure that the security of supply of energy, food and other essential materials in Europe remains guaranteed,” Siemons said. “It is also very important that industry in the port remains competitive so as not to weaken Europe’s strategic autonomy.”

From a container shipping perspective, Rotterdam is back on top as first-half volume allowed it to reclaim its title as Europe’s busiest container port that was lost for the first time to Antwerp-Bruges in the first quarter.

First-half volume increased 2.7% year over year to 7 million TEUs, driven by an 8.4% increase in imports from Asia to support growing European consumption and a 9.1% increase in trade with North America.

However, the increasing throughput and rising call sizes are exposing structural shortcomings in Rotterdam. Call size refers to the total number of containers loaded on and taken off a ship during a port call.

“Solutions to make the entire system more efficient and resilient must be sought in structural cooperation within the chain,” the port statement said. “The arrival of more than 100 container ships with a call size exceeding 12,000 TEUs this half year underscores the urgency of the situation.”

Handling the huge container flows and large call sizes in Rotterdam is coming on top of the phasing in and out of services in changing carrier alliances, labor interruptions and challenging weather conditions at the beginning of the year that have led to increasing waiting times on the land side of the deep-sea terminal operations.

The congestion is mostly confined to the land side, with a limited number of large container ships waiting to berth. This was confirmed by data from port visibility provider Portcast that shows six ships waiting to berth at Rotterdam as of July 20.

Low water levels on the Rhine and import duties imposed by the US on exports from Europe and China have not yet had “a demonstrable negative effect” on container handling in the first half of the year, according to the port.

One of the structural changes being discussed in Rotterdam is the smarter use of existing infrastructure; for example, by shifting more road transport to off-peak hours, bundling and exchanging containers on inland waterway corridors and sharing data via digital platforms.

While Rotterdam works on improving container flows, concerns are growing over the weakening competitive position of European industry. As one of the main gateways to North Europe, that is having a direct impact on Rotterdam’s bulk handling volume, particularly liquid bulk.

Several chemical companies have announced closures of plants in the Rotterdam area with the loss of hundreds of jobs, raising concerns about the future of the Dutch chemicals cluster.

Rotterdam’s total liquid bulk segment declined 5.3% year over year in the first half to 96.2 million metric tons. The throughput of mineral oil products showed a decline of 21.5% to 6.2 million metric tons, with the port describing the market as being in “backwardation,” which makes storage unprofitable because the current spot price is higher than the product’s futures price.

LNG was an outlier in the liquid bulk sector, with throughput increasing 9% as gas stocks in Europe continued to be replenished during the summer. But the volume of product categorized as “other liquid bulk cargo” fell 5.9% in the first half, mainly due to lower supplies of biodiesel from China because of anti-dumping duties and reduced use of palm oil as a raw material for biodiesel production in Europe.

Throughput of dry bulk cargo fell 8.9% year over year in the first half. The volume of iron ore and scrap was down 12.2% because of lower production in the German steel industry that is influenced by ongoing economic uncertainty and trade restrictions. Coal throughput decreased 21.1% due to lower supplies of coking coal, which is used in blast furnaces for steel production.

Originally published in the Journal of Commerce, July 22, 2025

This article was published by S&P Global Market Intelligence and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.