Hapag-Lloyd took another step towards its vision of equipping its entire dry container fleet with real-time tracking devices. The first of these IoT devices are beginning their installations on dry containers at the CMR depot in Wilhelmsburg, Germany.
The LoT devices will be able to transmit data in real-time from each container and thereby make supply chains more transparent and efficient. The new tech integrates the latest energy-harvesting technology and low-power consumption techniques to ensure they expedited service lives with high-frequency data transmission.
The container fleet is currently equipped with devices from the established TradeTech partner Nexxiot, and devices from ORBCOMM, a global leader in IoT solutions, will also be installed later this year.
Senior Director of Container Steering, Andrea Schöning, says that the tech’s mission is not a simple task. However, expansion is constant, saying, “Digitizing 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 to achieve the technology’s full potential. At the same time, we aim to make this product quickly available to our customers, as they require and increasingly expect these kinds of digitized solutions.”
In the following weeks or months, other installations are expected to begin in selected container depots in North and South Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Plans call for most of Hapag-Lloyd’s dry containers to be outfitted with these devices by the end of 2023.
Within the year 2023, it is also expected that up to 200 depots worldwide will install 1.6 million of these devices on standard containers.
