A gateway to the world market

When walking around Aarhus or any other bustling shopping centre in the region, you will see a host of groceries, textiles and durable consumer goods. Much of all this will have arrived in Aarhus via the port. 

If you then drive around Aarhus’s industrial estat-es and out into the surrounding area, you will pass by a huge variety of different enterprises that manufacture products which are exported worldwide via the Port of Aarhus.

Harbour Director Bjarne Mathiesen points out that Aarhus has direct connections to ports as far away as China and Japan – with regular services to more than 60 ports worldwide 

The harbour has an important role to play for the region’s trade and industry and thereby its citizens, as the Port of Aarhus is also a major workplace – the port and the associated services employ several thousand people. 

In addition to Danish imports and exports, the Port of Aarhus is also involved with transit goods. This might be cargo from the Far East destined for consumers in Eastern Europe. The goods arrive in Aarhus on a ship directly from China and are transshipped at the Port of Aarhus and then continue their journey on board a feeder vessel to Russia, for example. Transit cargo makes up an increasing share of turnover, and it was for this reason that, in 2004, the Port of Aarhus established AAR^®HUB as a platform for feeder ships from the Baltic states which enables them to exchange goods with overseas container ships.

The Port of Aarhus is Denmark’s largest con-tainer terminal with a market share of 65 per cent of all containers which are shipped in Danish ports, corresponding to about 500,000 TEUs a year. If placed end to end in a line, the containers would stretch all the way down to the southern coast of Spain.

“In recent years we have seen satisfactory growth in container turnover. And growing glob-alisation with increased intercontinental trade gives us every reason to believe in continued growth,” says Bjarne Mathiesen, who is greatly looking forward to being able to show off the latest harbour expansion covering 335,000 square metres as visible proof of this positive development. In the past ten years (1997-2007), the Port of Aarhus has invested one billion Danish kroner in new port facilities.   

However, the Port of Aarhus is more than just containers. When people living in the region enjoy beef tenderloin, the meat will be based on feedstuffs that have arrived in Aarhus by ship. The same goes for the coal which is used for domestic heating, and materials for the construction industry, e.g. stone and cement, which are used for building houses and roads.

And when local citizens and businessmen and ‘women drive their vehicles on board Mols-Linien’s ferries which are based at the port, most have a full tank of fuel – fuel that has also arrived and been unloaded at the harbour.

Bjarne Mathiesen, Harbour Director