Titel: Harbor and Europe

Duration: 4‘00‘‘

Insert: Author: Jörg Hertle Camera: Hans Duivenvoorden Cut: Birgitt Schellbach

Bauchbinden: 01´10“ Gerhard Thellmann - Hafenmeister 01´56“ Erich Ammon - Container Depot Nürnberg

Content: There is this old saying that is no longer a joke: „In they say ahoy – in Nuremberg they say ahoy ship!“ Regardless of whether you deem that funny, the Nuremberg harbor is economically important for the region of Nuremberg: All in all, about 5,300 people work there in 260 different companies. Many of them operate, far beyond the Franconian borders, on a European stage.

Text:

Instead of a romantic breeze you can perceive an international breeze blowing through the basins and wharves of the Nuremberg harbor. Here, three traffic routes Europe meet, railway, motorway and waterway. What began, more than three decades ago, as a wharf for a couple of inland mostly from Holland, has in the meantime become a modern reloading point for goods. Here at the Main-Danube channel, 9.2 m tons of goods are reloaded and confirmed by the harbormasters every year. Gerhard Thellmann and Wolfgang Popp are gauging a Slovakian cargo ship. The two harbormasters are checking the waterline before and after unloading the goods.

00´51“ Quote Thellmann

„233.“

00´54“

With the measurements, the harbormasters can calculate the exact amount of tons of artificial fertilizer that were unloaded from the cargo ship from . They realized that recently more goods have gone through the Nuremberg harbor.

01´09“ Quote Thellmann “This comes from the Danube, that is to say from Bratislava. Sometimes we also receive goods from Hungary and Austria, Linz. What is really popular at the moment is fertilizer that comes from Bratislava, and Linz in Austria.“

From artificial fertilizer from Slovakia for Frankonian farmers to sports articles from Herzogenaurach for athletes all over Europe and the world. All kinds of different goods go through the Nuremberg harbor. However, the amount could still be increased. The container depot has reached the limit of its capacity and is being expanded.

01´55“ Quote Ammon

“Europe. We assume that Nuremberg is the hub or is to become the hub. Every day trains from the sea harbors Hamburg, Bremerhaven and arrive which we have to distribute within a radius of 200 kilometers and of course we also hope that someday a ship from East Europe will arrive. Nuremberg is located in a perfect position to serve everybody.“

At the moment all the big loads for the 42 employees of the container depot at the Nuremberg harbor still come by train. Every day, they unload a container that was sent with a private train from the harbors. Every day, 250 containers are reloaded: from the train to the lorry and then via the motorway to the customers. Or: from the company in the region of Nuremberg via lorry to and train to the oversea harbors at the North Sea Coast.

03´00“ Quote Ammon

“Actually, there are no containers transported on the ships, since all the bridges along the channel are not high enough. You could only transport two containers, which would not be profitable. Of course, we hope that something will still change, like making the bridges higher. They are already talking about making the bridges higher so that at least some parts of the channel can be used for transport containers.“

Before restructuring the Main-Danube channel to meet the requirements of modern transport, the Nuremberg container depot has to be expanded. The currently 85,000 square meters of construction site at the harbor area will be ready in about a year. The second expansion will add another 75,000 square meters that will be used exclusively by trains, in the year 2007. In this way, more goods will go through Nuremberg and traffic on the motorways will diminish because the goods will be shipped instead.