Who Are We?

Since 2012, the nine Upper Rhine Ports, Ludwigshafen, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Kehl, Strasbourg, Colmar/Neuf-Brisach, Mulhouse, Weil am Rhein and the ports of Switzerland, have joined forces in order to promote the  port location in the trinational Upper-Rhine-region

Between 2012 and 2014, with the support of the European Union, they have set up a common strategy to get ready for the expected evolutions in the multimodal transport sector at the port hubs in the coming 20 years. Since 2015, the strategy is being implemented within the framework of the ports' alliance under the name Upper Rhine Ports.

Cooperation between the Upper Rhine Ports is an exemplary project in line with European Commission transport policy. The ambition of this policy is to develop sustainable transport in Europe by reducing CO₂ emissions by 60% between now and 2050 and by establishing a 30% modal shift to rail- and waterways. In this policy, the European Commission gives ports a central role as hubs within the core network of the TEN-T (Trans-European Transport Network).

The Upper Rhine: a tri-national corridor with considerable potential for European goods transport

The Upper Rhine holds a privileged strategic situation on the Rotterdam-Genoa and Paris-Bucharest routes. At the crossroads of the East-West and North-South European routes, it has efficient inter-connections with the surrounding economic hubs (Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, Zurich, Lyons, Paris, etc.). Aside from the Rhine itself, Europe's primary commercial river artery, the Upper Rhine area has at its disposal dense road, motorway and rail networks. This situation makes the  Upper Rhine region a core point for exchange within Europe and, in particular, the exchange of goods, which benefit from: • The region's economic clout; • Direct access to the sea ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp; • The diversity of the territory's range of logistics services.

The ports' range of infrastructure and logistic services: a strategic factor for a dynamic economic market place

The Upper Rhine region also offers considerable density in terms of logistics hubs. The region includes ports that play a decisive role in terms of multimodality and structure for the logistics chains. A large number of industrial and storage sites (e.g. cereals, metal, petroleum and chemical products) are based at the ports or near by. These ports handle large flows of goods for every industrial branch in the region (for instance, 50 MT of river traffic, 58% in import and 42% in export, i.e. nearly a quarter of all traffic on the Rhine). The ports thus have a major strategic role to play in promoting the region's economic development.