July 29 - The 200th shipment for Airbus' A320 final assembly line in Tianjin, China has been loaded onto the containership COSCO Hope at the Hamburger Hafen und Logistik (HHLA) container terminal Tollerort.
Four shipments per month are transported by containership from the Port of Hamburg to Tianjin.
The consignments contain forward and rear fuselages, the tailplane and rudder, the main landing gear doors and the inner landing flaps, which are moved by a special transport craft from Airbus' pier in Finkenwerder to the HHLA container terminal Tollerort.
The engine mounts (pylons) are delivered separately by truck to the terminal. All components are then loaded onto the containership on special sea transport frames, explained the Hamburg gateway.
The wings are built in Tianjin itself, and are delivered to the job site by Airbus' partner XAC.
HHLA explained that handling project cargo at a container terminal is routine for the company, and that cargoes from the project logistics sector are regularly shipped from its terminals.
"Loading of Airbus shipsets is of importance for Hamburg as an industrial base," said managing director of HHLA's container terminal Tollerort, Thomas Koch. "Even if a certain routine has set in after 200 shipments, each one of them represents a challenge that we are happy to tackle."
In 2013 the Port of Hamburg loaded 1.9 million tonnes of conventional general and project cargo.
