Maersk has talked up the benefits of the Duisberg location, which allows the company to utilise multiple modes of transport.
There are inland barges on the central Rhine waterway (connecting to the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam), major railway lines (to the ports of Northern Germany), and trucks via the main road axes of some of Western Europe’s largest economies. In addition, the air freight hubs of Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Cologne/Bonn and Düsseldorf can be quickly reached from Duisburg.
The services Maersk will offer in the 43,000 sqm warehouse include cross dock, pallet storage and all value-added services along the supply chain – from customs clearance to consolidation and deconsolidation.
Commenting on the news, Jens-Ole Krenzien, Maersk North Europe Continent Managing Director, said:
“The Maersk Flow Warehouse offers direct water access and trimodal connections. For our customers it will be a value-adding decoupling point optimising transport modes and creating flexibility in their product flows. We will be able to increase the speed to market significantly for our customers by enabling them to by-pass their European gateway or stock-keeping warehouses.”
“Rising demand among many of our customers for resilient end-to-end logistics solutions from a single provider shows us that these additional capacities are urgently needed,” he adds. “For this reason, we are currently massively and rapidly expanding our global warehousing and distribution portfolio in many countries in Europe, but also in the rest of the world – always in close dialogue with our customers to meet their exact needs.”
German developer Goldbeck International will complete the Flow Warehouse in Duisburg-Walsum for Maersk by the third quarter of 2023. The warehouse’s 84 dock levellers will handle up to 32,000 40-foot containers of customer cargo each year.
The property, which has a total area of 110,000 sqm, is part of the port of Duisburg (Duisport) and has a direct water connection to the Rhine. It offers an expansion reserve in addition to the already-planned 50,000 sqm of open space.
Thanks to a method of modular construction, a significant portion of the CO2 emissions that would otherwise be generated during the construction of a warehouse of this size will be avoided. By featuring special building insulation, heat pumps and a roof-mounted photovoltaic system, the warehouse is also expected to earn a BREEAM Excellent rating. In addition, greenery will be planted on some parts of the roofs, facades and a noise barrier, and nesting boxes for bats and birds will be installed on the exterior walls.
“By 2040, we aim to make our logistics services completely climate-neutral along the entire supply chain – meaning at sea, on land and in the air. However, for us, sustainability goes much further than the central issue of climate protection. With our warehouses, in addition to very low CO2 emissions and optimal flows of goods, it is always important to us to create a building that people enjoy working in and that simultaneously also contributes to biodiversity – as will soon be the case in Duisburg,” added Krenzien.