“Hamburg aims to handle more cargo. But to achieve this, the port must become more modern—a monumental undertaking for the new CEO.
Ice floes drift along the Elbe, while above the water, the container cranes of the Altenwerder port terminal tower into the sky. The light mist hanging over the facility this Friday morning creates an almost perfect photo opportunity for the next Hamburg calendar. Yet what the Hamburg Hafen und Logistik AG—or HHLA for short—is unveiling today has little to do with port-side romance. The city’s largest port operator is commissioning its first remotely controlled container cranes, thereby initiating a major overhaul of many of its facilities. This modernization is taking place right in the midst of ongoing operations—prompting HHLA’s new CEO, Jeroen Eijsink, to describe it as a "monumental effort" for the site.
Eijsink, 52, took over the top job in October from his predecessor, Angela Titzrath, whose tenure had recently been marked by setbacks. The Dutch native is now steering the port operator through a phase where several developments are converging: After a long dry spell, Hamburg has once again regained market share from its larger rivals, Rotterdam and Antwerp. This recovery has been aided by the entry of MSC—the world's largest container shipping line—which, for just over a year now, has stood alongside the city as HHLA’s largest shareholder and has been directing additional liner services to Hamburg. At the same time, the consequences of the city having long neglected the modernization of its facilities are now coming home to roost. The necessary upgrades must now be carried out while operations continue at full capacity.
For Eijsink, the new cranes unveiled on Friday mark a significant milestone. The port group has ordered fourteen of these steel giants—each standing 80 meters tall and weighing 1,600 tons—from the crane manufacturer Liebherr. They are scheduled to enter service in stages throughout this year and the next, with the aim of boosting the efficiency of the Altenwerder container terminal—a facility once hailed as the most modern in the world though by now, it is no longer universally at the cutting edge of technology. At the neighboring Burchardkai mega-terminal, HHLA will also soon be installing new container cranes. While technically designed differently, they too operate on a semi-automated basis and are intended to save time for major clients—the shipping lines.
Purely in terms of appearance, the new cranes are quite impressive. Painted in blue and red, they stand out against the gray winter sky, and from ground level, they appear almost monumental. However, their symbolic significance is even greater—and this is precisely where things get delicate, at least from the perspective of employee representatives in Hamburg. Admittedly, the operators of these so-called container gantry cranes represent just one occupational group among many in the port. Yet they are well-paid, and in the eyes of many employees, their fate serves as a symbol of the transformation taking place at the terminals.
Their work is changing significantly with the advent of this new technology: instead of sitting in a cab high above the quay, operators now sit inside an administrative building several hundred meters away, seated in front of monitors with joysticks in hand to maneuver the steel boxes.
At the same time, it is quite obvious that this new technology creates potential for cost savings. The cranes are designed in such a way that, in the future, a single employee can oversee multiple cranes simultaneously—meaning that less personnel will be required than before.
Eijsink, who previously worked for companies such as Siemens and DHL, is well aware of how sensitive this issue is—particularly at terminals where employee co-determination rights are strong. He notes that if specific tasks change or are eliminated, this does not automatically mean that people will lose their jobs; employees could instead take on other responsibilities. Eijsink intends to implement all changes in close cooperation with employee representatives, and he reports that communication has been good since he took office. He emerged from his first staff meeting "without a scratch"—and, as he quipped semi-jokingly, did not require "security protection" afterward. Group-wide, HHLA employs around 7,000 people, many of whom work at the port facilities.
From the industry's perspective, it is abundantly clear that changes are long overdue. Hamburg has wasted far too much time on disputes between management, the works council, and the city—its major public shareholder—says an industry insider who has been observing the shipping sector for years. As a result, automation has advanced in other countries, and once-leading terminals like Altenwerder have lost their competitive edge. Jan Tiedemann of the industry specialist service Alphaliner believes it is crucial that Hamburg now proceeds to modernize other facilities as well—such as the Tollerort terminal. The Chinese shipping company Cosco acquired a stake in this terminal a few years ago; an expansion was agreed upon but has not yet been implemented.
Melanie Leonhard (SPD), Hamburg’s Senator for Economic Affairs, stated on Friday at the Altenwerder terminal that they would now make Germany’s largest port "fit for the future." This entails, among other things, that job profiles and workflows changed within the port. Speaking to the *F.A.Z.* on the sidelines of the meeting, she acknowledged just how difficult it is to reconfigure the facilities—particularly during a phase of renewed growth in cargo volumes. This applies all the more given that the City and MSC, as owners of HHLA, intend to continue driving this growth and attracting additional shipping lines. Hamburg must remain "market-ready" at all times, the Senator emphasized—meaning it must continue to offer available time slots for new liner services, even while construction work is underway. Eijsink stated that the pace of development would continue to accelerate. He intends to provide further details at the annual press conference in March.” [1]
1. Die Container kommen ferngesteuert. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurt. 24 Jan 2026: 23. Von Christian Müßgens, Hamburg
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