Containers fly with HHLA

“With us container learn to fly," Angela Titzrath (left) CEO of HHLA, told members of the local press at HHLA’s annual results conference last week.

HHLA and the Fraunhofer Institut Center für Maritime Logistik (CML) and an as yet unnamed partner from the aircraft industry will work together to see whether containers could be transported through the air by means of drones. Technically, it may already be possible to transport an empty container weighing up to 2 tons by air.

Drone transport would add to the diversity of ways to move containers that HHLA is already working on:

• joint venture with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies
• project with MAN AG to test autonomous trucks in the port; the first trucks have just been delivered.

Mrs Titzrath said: “Now that it is technically feasible, it is now up to us to find solutions that are economical and to establish a time frame for such technology to be made available.”

In another development, HHLA has taken a majority stake in Bionic Production AG, a scientific research company looking at ways of serialising mass production of industrial components with additive manufacturing (3D printing).