Day: 2 August 2019

Last month the 50th Adenauer ADAC Circuit Trophy took place at the Nürburgring. For the second time, the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo from Konrad Motorsport, drove under the sponsoring cooperation of GEBHARDT Intralogistics Group and Reyher out of the pit lane. Axcil Jefferies, from Zimbabwe and Michele Di Martino, from Eitorf achieved the class victory in the SP9 Pro-Am classification and with that the 5th place in the overall standings at the 4th race of the VLN endurance championship.

However, Reyher and GEBHARDT not only successfully work together in the field of motor sports. In the Hamburg central warehouse of the leading wholesaler for fasteners and fixing technology, a 2-aisle shuttle warehouse including StoreBiter 300 MLS was delivered by GEBHARDT Fördertechnik in 2013 for container consolidation in front of the goods issue and various conveyor technology connections. In 2019 a further two-aisle GEBHARDT MLS shuttle warehouse and material flow components were added.

At that time, a total of 30,000 tonnes of goods were stored in approx. 35,000 storage locations in an automatic high-bay pallet warehouse. Further storage locations were located in pallet picking (25,000) and in the automatic container warehouse (120,000). From the beginning, Reyher placed great emphasis in the automation of their intralogistics – from storage, to order picking, to goods issue. MD, Dr. Peter Bielert, described, “GEBHARDT Fördertechnik […] as a competent partner who has contributed his own solution ideas and who was deterred by the complexity of our logistics centre”.

Hamburg is Germany’s biggest universal port and, with 9.9 million tons throughput in 2018, its second biggest inland port. For the first quarter of 2019, the recently published inland vessel data from the northern statistics office reports 34,640 TEU – 20ft standard containers – for the Port of Hamburg. This represents an increase of 20 percent in comparison with the same period last year. Additionally, in the first three months of 2019, at 2.57 million tons, the total quantity of cargo carried by inland waterway craft between the Port of Hamburg and its hinterland achieved double-digit growth of 12.1 percent.

One limiting influence on the further development of quantities by inland vessel this year has been the barely navigable River Elbe caused by low water since May. From Stefan Kunze’s point of view; he is head of the Port of Hamburg Representative Office in Dresden, against this backdrop it is difficult to forecast the ongoing development of cargo quantities carried by inland vessels on the Elbe this year. Already last year, for the Middle and Upper Elbe from the Geesthacht lock to the next one at Usti nad Labem in Czechia, that is to say the undammed section, navigation was difficult. At times, from June onwards on this section of the river, inland shipping came to a standstill because of inadequate draft.

Fundamentally, the expected increase in seaport-hinterland traffic in the coming years will open up very good prospects for Hamburg for more shipments by inland craft in the Elbe river basin. However, in Kunze’s view, this calls for better alignment of the infrastructure to the operating requirements of inland shipping. He stresses that: “Digitalization and intermeshing the various carriers, construction work on the waterways and optimized coordination of inland vessel calls in the Port of Hamburg, will in future lead to more cargo and simplified handling of transport chains along the Elbe and Elbe Lateral Canal.”

The international transport and logistics company Gebrüder Weiss is continuing its path to becoming a Silk Road specialist. On July 30, 2019, the logistics company opened a representative office in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. “This adds to our local presence in Central Asia, enabling us to pave the way for our customers to a promising market, as the links between Europe and Asia are becoming increasingly important,” says Thomas Moser, Director and Regional Manager Black Sea/CIS at Gebrüder Weiss. With a population of 30 million, Uzbekistan is one of the largest marketplaces in Central Asia.

The logistics company is pioneering along the legendary trade route, and already has several of its own locations along the Silk Road – such as in Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and China. The opening of the new office in Tashkent is another piece in the puzzle of the logistics company’s business strategy to expand the land route between Europe and China. Customers in Tashkent and the surrounding area will now be served by local staff. “In addition to land transport, air and sea freight also make up part of our service portfolio,” explains Moser. And these services are to be successively expanded. Organizationally speaking, the Uzbek representative office is assigned to the Gebrüder Weiss branch in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

From an economic point of view, the city of Tashkent with a population of two million is primarily known as an industrial city and transport hub on the Silk Road. Over 50 percent of the gross domestic product is generated by industrial companies in various sectors. Agriculture, construction, freight and passenger transport are some of the cornerstones of the economy, along with gas, oil, gold, and uranium. These mineral resources, textile and food products, and automobiles are some of the country’s most important export goods. Its largest foreign trade partners are Russia, China, and Kazakhstan.