The Port of Rotterdam covers 105 square kilometers and was the world’s busiest port by cargo tonnage from 1962 to 2004, before Singapore and Shanghai passed it. It handles over 428 million tons and 14.2 million TEUs a year for a hinterland of more than 500 million consumers. In the 19th century, as river routes to the North Sea silted up, engineer Pieter Caland proposed the Nieuwe Waterweg, a canal in which river currents were supposed to scour a dug pilot channel to full depth. Clay, peat and incoming tides defeated that plan, laborers finished the job by hand, and the waterway opened in 1872. In the 1970s the port built new land in the sea at the Europoort and Maasvlakte.

A second Maasvlakte extension was suspended in 2005 by the Dutch Council of State over marine habitat damage, then approved with compensation measures and opened in 2013. The EECV quay has a 24 meter draft, and the ore carrier Berge Stahl, drawing 23 meters fully loaded, could dock at only Rotterdam and one terminal in Brazil, timing tidal windows through the Eurogeul channel. The Delta Terminal, nicknamed the Ghost Terminal, runs automated guided vehicles that follow magnetic transponders in the pavement and automated stacking cranes. The Maeslantkering storm surge barrier guards the port, which aims for zero emissions by 2050 through cold ironing and paid €5.6 million in green rebates in 2024.

• The squat effect pulls a moving ship deeper into shallow water, so ships with one meter of clearance need strict speed control.
• The port authority has about 1,270 staff, and its 2019 Container 42 project sent a sensor-packed container on a two-year trip around the world.
• Each Maeslantkering door is roughly the size of the Eiffel Tower on its side and sinks into place by flooding its hollow chambers.
• In the bombed Kop van Zuid district, the former Holland America Line headquarters became the Hotel New York in 1993, and the Erasmus Bridge opened in 1996.
• The timber Floating Office Rotterdam opened in 2021, rises and falls with the tides, and houses the Global Center on Adaptation.