South Holland is a port and services economy that people persistently describe as a manufacturing one. Manufacturing accounted for just 7.92% of its gross value added in 2024, against 21.47% for trade, transport and hospitality. It is also not the country's largest regional economy, as is often claimed: Noord-Holland led on GDP in 2024 at EUR 243.3 billion against EUR 231.2 billion here, and South Holland's GDP per capita of EUR 60,033 sits below the national EUR 62,381. Rotterdam is about 1,600 km from our Barcelona hub, with LTL groupage at 3-4 working days on three weekly departures.
LTL groupage transit
3-4 days
Corridor departures
3×/week
via the Spain–Netherlands corridor
Road distance from our Barcelona hub
~1600 km
Border crossing
La Jonquera · Hazeldonk
Postal codes covered
What it does have is Europe's largest port by a wide margin. Rotterdam handled 428.4 million tonnes in 2025, down 1.7%, with container throughput up 3.1% to 14,244,954 TEU. The port area runs more than 40 km and covers 12,500 hectares of land and water, takes around 27,384 seagoing and 93,680 inland vessel calls a year, and the port authority puts related employment at roughly 182,000 jobs. Its share of the Hamburg-Le Havre range was 36.6% in 2025, slipping from 37.1% — dominant, but not gaining.
Shell's Pernis site is the other giant: 404,000 barrels of crude a day, which Shell puts at 20 million tonnes a year, across more than 60 plants on 550 hectares, and which the company describes as Europe's largest refinery. It was physically connected to the Porthos CO2 storage network by pipeline in spring 2026, though injection had not started as of Shell's June 2026 publication.
The third pillar is glass. South Holland held 4,813.9 hectares of horticulture under glass across 1,380 holdings in 2024 — 48.0% of the entire Dutch total — and the municipality of Westland alone accounts for 2,588.8 hectares, a quarter of all glasshouse area in the Netherlands. That is a large, steady generator of palletised inbound and outbound freight quite separate from the port.
Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden, Dordrecht, Delft and Zoetermeer cover the province. Rotterdam carries the port and refinery volume, the Westland glasshouse belt west of The Hague generates horticultural freight, and Dordrecht sits on the A16 corridor south.
Rotterdam
The Hague
Leiden
Dordrecht
Delft
Zoetermeer
The route into South Holland clears La Jonquera, runs through France and Belgium and crosses into the Netherlands on the A16 at Hazeldonk, which then feeds the A16 and A15 straight into the Rotterdam-Europoort area at about 1,600 km from our Barcelona hub. The A15 itself runs 137 km from the Maasvlakte through Rotterdam to the A325, and the Betuweroute — 160 km of double-track electrified freight railway to the German border at Zevenaar-Emmerich — takes the rail share, with the port serving as start or end point for more than 400 international rail connections. APM Terminals Maasvlakte II automates around 80% of its crane movements and runs 73 electric Lift-AGVs. One rule matters more than any of this for a delivery address inside the city: since 1 January 2025 Rotterdam operates a zero-emission zone, not merely a low-emission one, so the vehicle that can legally make the final drop is a different question from the vehicle that carried the freight up from Spain, and we plan the last leg around it rather than at the cordon. Air is no alternative here — Rotterdam The Hague Airport recorded zero tonnes of freight and zero tonnes of mail in 2025.
Get a quote →The Westland glasshouse cluster maps to our food and beverage service, the Pernis and Botlek petrochemical estate to chemicals, and the port's distribution and re-export warehousing to e-commerce and industrial machinery. Technology, construction materials and furniture run across the province.
Rotterdam sits about 1,600 km from our Barcelona hub and LTL groupage delivers in 3-4 working days on three departures a week, entering the Netherlands at Hazeldonk and running the A16/A15 into the port area.
It can, and it is stricter than the low-emission zones elsewhere in Europe. Rotterdam has operated a zero-emission zone since 1 January 2025, so access for a delivery address inside it depends on the vehicle rather than on the shipment. We plan the final leg around that in advance rather than discovering it at the boundary.
No — Noord-Holland was larger on GDP in 2024, EUR 243.3 billion against EUR 231.2 billion, and South Holland's GDP per capita is actually below the national average. It is the largest port economy, which is a different claim, and manufacturing is only 7.92% of its value added.
Postcode prefixes 26 through 34 — the Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden, Delft, Dordrecht and Zoetermeer ranges. Any postcode under those prefixes prices as standard South Holland coverage.
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