Liner shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd reached the milestone of equipping 100,000 of its reefers with a monitoring device. 100,000 reefer containers are smart now, as Hapag-Lloyd claims today. Digitalisation remains an important topic at Hapag-Lloyd this year.
By August 2023, the company plans to have 90% of its reefer containers equipped with monitoring systems. By the end of the year, all Hapag-Lloyd reefer boxes will be smart, as Hapaq-Lloyd expects.
The goal now is to make, in addition to its reefer containers, all of its containers smart, including its 1.6 million dry containers.
The installation of tracking devices on dry containers began end of last summer and is currently underway in depots around the world. Hapag-Lloyd expects to launch a first customer product for standard boxes this year, and to have majority of its containers worldwide equipped with tracking devices by the end of 2023.
Andrea Schöning, Senior Director Container Steering says that “currently new-built containers are being equipped with tracking devices directly upon completion in the factory, and the containers in our fleet are equipped during the regular Pre-Trip- Inspection (PTI) process by depots. Biggest installation locations are Hapag-Lloyds own reefer depot in Rotterdam, with more than 12.000 installations since start of the rollout, followed by depots Belgian Container Maintenance in Antwerp (4.700 installations), and Tercon Terminal de Contenedores in Guayaquil, Ecuador (4.300 installations).”
The liner giant is using today the data from its 100,000 reefers to monitor the fleet for any incidents that may damage the cargo, such as wrong temperature setpoints, or technical alarms. With this, local teams handle up to 2.000 incidents every single week, to reduce cargo claims and improve transport quality, as it is mentioned by Mr. Andrea Schöning.
From his side Olaf Habert, Director Container Applications said “By having equipped the lion’s share of our reefer fleet and starting mass installations on the dry fleet, we have made a large step towards creating the world’s smartest container fleet. Now it’s time to also bring our use cases to the next level.”
