Alicia Dowton

Cargo Handling

Hyster to provide electric empty container handler to Caru Containers

Hyster will provide Caru Containers with a 100% battery-powered empty container handler for its depot in Rotterdam, as the Dutch company looks to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The unit will be powered by 650-volt lithium-ion batteries, with electricity sourced from solar panels on site at the depot.

More than 95% of Caru Container’s Scope 1 CO2 emissions comes from its diesel forklifts and empty container handlers.

It is hoped that the electric model will help to tackle these emissions while also helping to reduce operational expenditure in terms of diesel costs.

Thirza Belder, sustainability officer, Caru Containers, said: “We are keen to integrate sustainability into our entire value chain as we are striving to be net zero before 2030.

“Therefore, we started discussions with Hyster in 2021 to provide electric lift trucks and equipment for our depot, which later led to the electric empty container handler.”

Caru already possesses a 240 kilowatt-hour capacity battery that can store enough energy to charge the empty container handler for most of the year, supplemented with grid power when solar energy is less efficient during shorter winter days.

This solution is expected to supply sufficient charge to allow the truck to complete five to six required hours of work during a shift before being recharged overnight.

Throughout the site, Caru has installed measuring devices to calculate what percentage of the energy used comes from solar.

Jan Willem van den Brand, director, global business development, big trucks, Hyster, stated: “This is a great application for a fully electric vehicle on a site that produces its own electricity.”

Hyster is also involved in projects including providing an empty container handler powered by hydrogen fuel cells in Hamburg, a hydrogen fuel cell-powered container handler in Los Angeles and a fuel-cell powered reachstacker in Valencia.

Regarding the best technology for customers, van den Brand explained: “For some operations, lithium-ion power might be the answer, but for others, hydrogen is the right choice.

“The answer depends on so many factors like duty cycle, utility grid capacity and fuel availability. Our customers deserve choices that allow them to build the right solution based on their needs – not shoehorning a single technology into their operation.”

This electric empty container handler at the Caru depot is expected to operate for approximately 2,000 hours per year.

The empty container handler will be an electric equivalent to the Hyster H10XD-ECD8 double-container handler, which can create stacks of up to eight containers high, while handling two at a time.

Written by Alicia Dowton
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