Automated Container Terminal History and ABB Cranes

How the automated container terminal grew from hand-loaded docks and Rotterdam's 1993 robot yard to remote cranes, and what ABB supplies to ports today.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/1/20265 min read

An automated container terminal moves steel boxes between ships, yard stacks and trucks with cranes and vehicles that are driven by software, or by operators sitting in an office instead of a crane cab. This post follows that change from the gangs of dockworkers who loaded cargo by hand, through the first container ship in 1956 and the first automated terminal in Rotterdam in 1993, to the expansions opening this autumn in Colombo and Melbourne. It covers what ABB supplies to these terminals, from crane automation to remote control rooms, and the jobs that are still done by hand.

Blue ship-to-shore cranes working over a large container ship at a quay

A container ship under the ship-to-shore cranes at Colombo West International Terminal, which run on ABB automation. Photo: CWIT via ABB

From longshore gangs to the first robot terminal

Before containers, a cargo ship was loaded piece by piece. Sacks, barrels, crates and bales were carried, slung and stowed by gangs of longshoremen, and a ship could spend days in port. In 1956 loading loose cargo onto a medium-sized ship cost about $5.83 per tonne. That year the trucking entrepreneur Malcom McLean sent the converted tanker Ideal X from Newark to Houston with 58 truck-sized boxes on deck, and his team worked out a loading cost of about 16 cents per tonne. Dockworkers saw the threat at once; one longshore union official reportedly said, as the ship sailed, that they ought to sink it.

Black and white photo of dockworkers rolling barrels on a crowded pier

Stevedores handling barrels on a New York dock around 1912. Photo: Lewis Hine / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Containers cut the gangs, but they did not remove the manual work at the quay. Every box stacked on deck has to be fixed to the one below with twistlocks and tied down with lashing rods, and lashers still climb between the stacks to do it by hand. On the quay, people insert and remove the twistlocks as each box swings past under a crane. It is heavy, repetitive work done right next to moving loads.

A worker in a hard hat between tall stacks of containers fixing lashing rods

A lasher securing containers by hand between stacks on a Maersk ship. Photo: Maersk Line / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The yard was automated first. On 25 June 1993 Europe Container Terminals opened the Delta/Sea-Land Terminal on the Maasvlakte in Rotterdam, the first automated container terminal in the world, built for the shipping line Sea-Land and opened by Queen Beatrix. Driverless automated guided vehicles carried boxes between the quay cranes and the yard, and automated stacking cranes built and dug out the stacks. Ship-to-shore cranes still had drivers. The idea took years to copy, and most automated terminals were only built in the 21st century.

Orange driverless vehicles carrying containers beneath a large quay crane

Automated guided vehicles under a quay crane at ECT in Rotterdam. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 1.0)

Remote cranes, new terminals and ABB at the quay

On 1 October WorldCargo News reported that Colombo West International Terminal (CWIT), Sri Lanka's first fully automated container terminal, doubled its annual capacity to 3.2 million TEU after a $750 million expansion, and can now berth three ultra-large container ships at the same time. In September Victoria International Container Terminal in Melbourne, Australia's first fully automated terminal, started its Phase 3B expansion, adding an automated ship-to-shore crane, three automated container carriers and four automated stacking cranes, on the way to more than 1.6 million TEU a year.

Aerial view of a port with rows of containers, cranes along the quay and open water

The container terminals of the Maasvlakte in Rotterdam from the air, 2014. Photo: Michielverbeek / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Labour remains the sharpest question. On 24 September the Bergen Record described how New Jersey longshore workers have pushed back on automation. Their union's contract, settled in March 2025 after a strike in October 2024, commits employers to add one job for each semi-automated crane. The employers' association says absenteeism at the New Jersey ports has halved since spring 2025 and productivity is up 7%. Twistlock handling is being automated as well. Bromma, for example, sells automatic platforms that remove and insert twistlocks on the quay, and says the job drops from more than 20 seconds to under one.

Two metal twistlock fittings with blue handles set into a painted steel deck

Twistlock fittings on a ship's deck, where container corners are locked in place. Photo: Davepark / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ABB supplies much of the crane automation in these terminals. It says automation from ABB runs on more than 1,000 stacking cranes in over 30 terminals. At CWIT it delivered the automation for 18 automated stacking cranes and eight ship-to-shore cranes that are operated remotely from a control room, and early in 2026 the terminal made its first automated landside move with a ship-to-shore crane. In May ABB launched Waterside Automation, which uses sensors, AI and data analytics to automate lifts over the vessel itself, together with stowage checks, container number reading and digital work instructions.

Low view up into the steel legs of blue quay cranes with a container hanging between them

Quay cranes of the kind ABB's Waterside Automation is designed to automate. Photo: ABB

What comes next for automated container terminals

The hardest remaining step is the waterside. Over the ship, the crane has to deal with swaying boxes, a moving hull and wind, so most quay cranes are still controlled by a person, even if that person sits in an office. ABB describes Waterside Automation as a stepwise transition toward autonomous quay cranes, where one operator supervises several cranes and steps in only for exceptions. Lashing on deck is still done by people, and robots for that job are far from routine.

An orange driverless vehicle loaded with a blue and a red container on a quay

An automated guided vehicle carrying containers at the Port of Rotterdam, 2015. Photo: Alf van Beem / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Robot arms may close that gap. Heavy industrial arms such as the ABB IRB 6700 already handle large loads in factories, and an arm like that could in principle handle twistlocks or lashing gear at a fixed quayside station. ABB does not sell such a cell, and one would have to cope with salt, weather and tight cycle times. Any such cell would be designed and tested in simulation first, the way factory cells are built in RobotStudio. Similar logistics problems appear in our post on airport baggage handling.

A yard full of coloured containers with rows of blue stacking cranes behind

The CWIT container yard in Colombo, served by automated stacking cranes with ABB automation. Photo: CWIT via ABB

The same ideas are already moving inland. Driverless carriers and automated stacking cranes in ports work on the same principles as the mobile robots in factories and warehouses, such as ABB's Flexley Mover AMRs, which find their way with Visual SLAM. For households the effect is indirect: most goods in a home spent part of their trip in a container, and faster terminals mean shorter waits. The open problems are the cost of automating an existing terminal, what happens when the terminal software goes down, and how many dock jobs change rather than disappear.

The ABB Flexley Mover P604, which navigates with 3D Visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

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