Mannheim Harbour

Mannheim Harbour, named Rhein-Neckar-Hafen Mannheim, is a river port on the Rhine in Mannheim, at the confluence of the Rhine and the Neckar in Baden-Wurttemberg. It consists out of 4 main harbour areas Handelshafen, Rheinauhafen, Altrheinhafen and Industriehafen, which are divided into 14 single harbour basins and 3 river docks.

Rhein-Neckar-Hafen Mannheim
Location
Country	Germany
Location	Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Details
Opened	1828
Operated by	Rhein-Neckar-Hafengesellschaft Mannheim mbH
Owned by	State of Baden-Württemberg
Type of harbour	River port
Size of harbour	3.420 km²
Land area	8.635 km²
Size	11.310 km²
No. of berths	4
No. of piers	14
Statistics
Annual container volume	8.1 million tonnes (2015)
Website , port of Mannheim GmbH

It is one of the most important inland ports in Europe. The port covers 3.42 km² of water (2.83 km² Rhine, 0.59 km² Neckar) and 8.635 km² of dockland. The total land area covered from the harbour is about 11.31 km², making it the biggest inland port in Germany based on this measure.^[1]

The Rhein-Neckar-Hafen Mannheim reflects a trimodal transport node at the junction of road and rail inks and two national waterways and offers various transhipment facilities. The 4 main harbour areas have overnight rail connections to all German and many important European commercial centres and it can be accessed by road via several main motorways.

History

Year	Historic data
1247	First mention in records of river tolls at the confluence of the Neckar.
1349	Rhine toll station above the fishing village of Mannheim.
1607	Foundation of Mannheim, development into a trading and depot centre.
1828	Opening of the free port of Mannheim.
1854	Connection of the port to the railway system.
1870-1875	Construction of the Mühlau Port.
1892-1895	Construction of the Rhine Quay.
1896-1901	Construction of the Rheinau Port from a private company. Taken over by the state in 1903.
1962-1964	Construction of the Oil Terminal (Friesenheim Basin)
1968	1st container terminal in the Trade Port.
1991	1st combined load transport terminal in the Trade Port.
2008	1st photovoltaic systems installed on a total of 7,000 m² of roof area.

^[2]

Freight exchange

Year	Tonnes of freight
2003	6.9 million
2005	8.1 million
2007	8.3 million
2009	7.8 million
2011	6.5 million
2013	8,7 million
2015	8.1 million

^[3]

Infrastructure

Map of the harbour

The port includes 226 hectares of outside storage and handling area and 119 hectares of roofed storage area. It also provides 1,527 storage silos and bunkers for grain, coal, gravel, cement, fruit, feed and other bulk goods with a total capacity of over 385,000 tonnes and for liquid based products like mineral and edible oils, 1,078 tanks with a total capacity of almost 1.5 million tonnes are available.^[4]

Furthermore, the port provides:

• 78 loading and crane gantries (24 on the quayside)
• 37 portal cranes (25 on the quayside)
• 14 heavy duty cranes up to 150 tonnes (10 on the quayside)
• 4 special transhipment systems for containers
• 52 mobile cranes
• 210 other lifting systems
• 24 marine loaders

^[5]

Today

About 500 enterprises with more than 20,000 jobs are established on the dockland and service providers in the wider area around the port. The port management company has announced in December 2017 that the port will generate new records mostly in all segments which are operated.^[6][7]