New Rail Gate Bremerhaven rail transhipment facility officially opened
After two years of construction and a six-month trial phase, Rail Gate Bremerhaven, a new rail gate for combined freight transport on the terminal site of the EUROGATE Container Terminal Bremerhaven, will officially go into operation tomorrow, Tuesday, 1 July. The facility was officially inaugurated today in the presence of the Mayor of Bremen, Dr Andreas Bovenschulte, and the Senator for Economic Affairs, Ports and Transformation, Kristina Vogt.
Michael Blach, Chairman of the EUROGATE Group Management Board, said at the inauguration: “The commissioning of Rail Gate Bremerhaven is a first major milestone in our efforts to further develop the Bremerhaven terminal location for the future. We have invested 70 million euros in this facility, which is one of the most modern of its kind and significantly improves rail transhipment at the CTB and MSC Gate. Based on the current market situation, we can see that container transhipment at the Bremerhaven site is growing again. We firmly believe that we will regain market share here in the future in competition with locations in Western Europe. However, this requires further investment in the location, in the modernisation of infrastructure and hinterland connections, and in new technologies such as automated systems for the transhipment site itself. EUROGATE is ready to do its part in these efforts.”
Kristina Vogt, Bremen’s Senator for Economic Affairs, Ports and Transformation, said: “Bremerhaven is traditionally one of the strongest railway ports in Europe. The new Rail Gate Bremerhaven facility significantly increases our rail capacity and makes our port faster and more efficient. This secures jobs and strengthens our competitiveness vis-à-vis other European locations. Especially now, with freight traffic growing, this infrastructure is indispensable. It is important that we invest here together with the federal government and companies – because we can only achieve our climate policy goals if rail and port interact optimally.”
Between the beginning of 2022 and the end of 2024, around 60,000 square metres of asphalt and 42,000 tonnes of track ballast were newly laid, 200 tonnes of steel were dismantled, 20 kilometres of new cable routes and 19 kilometres of fibre optic cable were installed for the construction of the new rail gate. The new Rail Gate Bremerhaven has a total area of around 80,000 square metres. Its six transhipment tracks, each 762 metres long, will be able to handle up to 330,000 containers per year in future.
A key innovation at this facility is the use of four remote-controlled railway cranes. Unlike conventional railway cranes, these gantry cranes are no longer controlled from a cab directly on the crane, but from control stations in Gatehouse 4. Innovative sensor technology and state-of-the-art camera systems on the cranes support the operators in their work and also take over some of the digital processing of container data. These systems have given rise to the new, future-oriented job profile of the remote crane operator (RCO), which has already demonstrated its advantages over the previous method of operating railway cranes during the test phase.
The new rail gate is operated under the name ‘Rail Gate Bremerhaven GmbH’ by a consortium consisting of EUROGATE Container Terminal Bremerhaven (CTB) and ROLAND Umschlagsgesellschaft, each with a 50 per cent stake in the company.
