The International Transport & Logistics Cluster in the Copenhagen Capital Region is made up of all forms of international transportation – maritime, air and land. The cluster also comprises storage and warehouse businesses and other related business closely connected to transportation and also includes shipbuilding. It does not include local transport, such as railways, bus and local haulage traffic.
Road Haulage
In Northern Europe the Øresund Region has 5th place in the statistics for road haulage in relation to the amount of goods transported. The transport of goods by road in the Øresund Region has shown a slight reduction, due primarily to a general decrease in goods to the Danish market, whereas Skåne (in Southern Sweden) has shown a small increase.
Despite this slight decrease in the amount of goods transported by road, lorry and truck traffic in the Region increases steadily year by year.
Railway transport
Between 1999 and 2004, goods traffic by rail increased in the Øresund Region.
International goods transport represents a greater portion of the total rail haulage on the Danish side of the Sound than on the Swedish. Thus, there is a greater portion of transit traffic in Denmark, which can apparently be explained by the fact that Denmark has a land border with Germany, and that the internal distances within Denmark are often too short to be worth transporting goods by rail. This is also illustrated by the large difference between the railways’ market share in Denmark and in Sweden.
While the railway in Demark only transports extremely limited amount of the total goods traffic, the railway plays a much greater role in Sweden. Generally Sweden is one of Europe’s leading nations in transporting goods by rail.
Maritime transport
Measured by turnover, maritime transport is, without exception, the largest of the transport sectors.
There is also a distinct difference between the Danish and Swedish shares. 95% of turnover of the Øresund Region’s maritime transportation sector is generated by the shipping companies of Sjælland (Zealand), who clearly dominate when examining the total turnover of the sector involving the logistics of goods transport.
From a Northern European perspective, maritime transport of goods is concentrated in the huge global harbours like Rotterdam, Hamburg and Antwerp. Harbours in the Øresund Region function like local Northern European harbours, for loading and unloading goods for “feeder routes”; harbours whose primary function is to deliver goods to the large global harbours in Northern Europe. Nevertheless, the Øresund (the Sound) has some of the heaviest sea traffic in the world, with over 45,000 container ships passing through it each year.
Air transport
The Øresund Region has two international airports, Copenhagen Airport (Kastrup) and Malmö (Sturup).Copenhagen Airport is by far the larger when measuring cargo and passenger transport. In 2008, the freight volume passing through Copenhagen Airport was 347,156 tons, 10 times the volume in Malmö-Sturup. About two thirds of this cargo was goods in transit with an end-station outside the region. In Europe as a whole, the Øresund Region has a middle position, when compared to the largest air-cargo transport hubs like Frankfurt.