After 13 years as head of the HHM representative office in Budapest, Krisztina Kovacs is retiring. She learnt her trade at a Hungarian freight forwarding company before moving to the Multimar shipping agency. “We would like to thank Krisztina Kovacs, who has reliably represented the Port of Hamburg in Hungary,” said Marina Basso Michael, Regional Director Europe at HHM, in front of over 200 invited guests at the port evening in Budapest on Thursday.

Along with Krisztina Kovacs, her assistant Zsuzsanna Lőrincz will also be leaving the representative office to take on new tasks. “Our two long-standing employees have worked tirelessly for the Port of Hamburg for many years. We would like to thank them for this. At the same time, we also see this change as a new departure and are placing our trust in Alexander Till, who will now manage the Hungarian representative office as well as the Austrian one,” says Axel Mattern, CEO at HHM.

Alexander Till will take over the Hungarian representative office from 1 July 2024. The experienced logistics professional has been managing the office in Austria since 2007. He was previously Manager Sea Freight at Schenker & Co, where he was responsible for the Austrian market and the South East Europe region, which included Hungary. “I have known the Hungarian market for many years and have never completely lost sight of it. Now I’m looking forward to the task of convincing Hungarian companies of the advantages of the Port of Hamburg,” says Alexander Till, who is also a member of the board of Verein Netzwerk Logistik (VNL) and Combinet. In addition, Till has been a lecturer at the bfi University of Applied Sciences in Vienna for many years.

The Hungarian market is very important for the Port of Hamburg. The favourable geographical location between the countries of Central, Southern and Eastern Europe as well as the TEN corridors running through Hungary play a decisive role here. At the same time, Hungary is a central hub for the distribution of international goods flows within Europe. Last year, for example, around 75,000 TEU (20-foot standard containers) with origin or destination Hungary were loaded via the Port of Hamburg. The Port of Hamburg is also characterised by its excellent departure density. There are 34 container train connections a week between Hamburg and Budapest. Over 85 per cent of the goods handled in Hamburg are transported by rail to and from Hungary in a climate-neutral way. For containerised cargo, the share of rail in the modal split is almost 100 per cent.