The first devices are being fitted at the CMR depot
Hapag-Lloyd has begun installing real-time tracking devices on its dry container fleet at the CMR depot in Wilhelmsburg in the shipping company’s hometown of Hamburg.
Installations will begin in other selected container depots in North and South Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in the following weeks and months.
Maximilian Rothkopf, COO of Hapag-Lloyd, said: “We are very excited to get started now. We are the first carrier in the industry to undertake such a far-reaching step towards the digitalisation of container shipping.
“The containers leaving our depots with a tracking device will now be fully visible to us and, in a next step, to our customers as well – whether they are in a warehouse or moving on a truck, train or barge.”
Within the next year up to 200 depots worldwide will take part in the installation of 1.6m of these Internet of Things (IoT) devices on standard containers.
Hapag-Lloyd plans to have the vast majority of its dry containers be outfitted with these devices by the end of 2023.
Rothkopf added: “We believe that the increased transparency has the potential to improve the management of strained supply chains for the benefit of our customers.”
The tracking devices will be able to transmit data in real time from each container, helping to make supply chains more transparent and efficient.
Each device can supply location data based on GPS, measure ambient temperature within the container, and monitor any sudden shocks to it.
To ensure that they have ultra-long service lives with high-frequency data transmission, the devices integrate the latest energy-harvesting technology and low-power consumption techniques.
The container fleet is currently being equipped with devices from the established TradeTech partner Nexxiot and devices from ORBCOMM, a global leader in IoT solutions, will also be installed starting later this year.
Andrea Schöning, senior director of container steering at Hapag-Lloyd, said: “Digitalising our entire container fleet will be a challenging task. We are now making the first steps of a large-scale project.
“In this first rollout phase, it will be important to streamline all processes together with our IoT partners so as to achieve the technology’s full potential.”
Schöning noted that Hapag-Lloyd aims to make this product quickly available to its products as they require and increasingly expect “these kinds of digitalised solutions”.
