German port Wilhelmshaven to take on Rotterdam
Maersk only customer to new Jade-Weser port The small town of Wilhelmshaven on Germany's North Sea coast, with a population of only 81,000, is already the country's largest naval base.With its new Jade-Weser-Port container hub, Wilhelmshaven became Germany's only deep water port and hopes to give Rotterdam and Antwerp a run for their money and become the main stopping point in Europe for supersize container ships arriving from Asia.Since the mid-1950s, Wilhelmshaven has become the largest German import terminal for crude oil, with pipelines supplying refineries in the Rhine-Ruhr region and Hamburg, and also a major handling location for goods such as petroleum products, coal and chemical products.Nevertheless, the Jade-Weser-Port Container Terminal will catapult the port into the world's premier league, with the capacity to handle the largest container ships - including the future triple-E class ships that have a carrying capacity of 18,000 TEU or "twenty-foot equivalent unit," which is the unit of measure in the sector.Wilhelmshaven's 18m deep port will allow these huge new giants to dock fully loaded independent of the tide at any time of night or day.At the moment, the site is a vast stretch of sand with a few diggers and excavators, a scattering ...
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