Cargotec’s Kalmar and MacGregor have announced their joint participation in AEGIS (Advanced, Efficient and Green Intermodal Systems), a three-year project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme.

The focus of the AEGIS project is on integrating smaller ships, inland transport and short-sea shipping with larger terminals to create a completely new European transport system. The goal is to develop more flexible and user-centric transport, improve services to rural and urban areas, and revitalise regional ports and city terminals. Kalmar and MacGregor will be the technology providers for the project.

The project has been selected by the EU Commission to show that autonomous ships and port automation technologies can make waterborne transport much more flexible and user-oriented while further reducing the environmental impact of transport in the EU.

Janne Suominen, Manager, Offering Development, MacGregor: “Increasing the level of automation in cargo handling onboard vessels and in ports is critical in terms of developing waterborne logistics systems in inter-european cargo transport. We expect that our involvement in AEGIS will provide valuable input for our strategic initiatives to develop world-leading cargo handling technology for connected and automated transport.”

Lasse Eriksson, Vice President, Technology, Kalmar Mobile Solutions: “By participating in this project we want to help smaller ports and inland cargo logistics operators to address the challenges they are facing, which include congestion and scaling problems due to heavy road traffic, ever-larger vessel sizes and increasingly limited storage space as well as labour cost and availability.”