Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) will hire fifty additional blue collar staff members to its workforce at the Container Terminal Burchardkai (CTB). This is a continuation of the staff measures that HHLA began last year in response to the ever-increasing peak loads in container handling.
Heinz Brandt, Chief Human Resources Officer at HHLA explains: ¡°Everyone in the logistics chain has to accept that peak loads will occur more regularly than before as we go forward. In order to continue to offer the same high level of quality that we have for years we need additional staff. That¡¯s why we added 100 new employees at the Container Terminals Altenwerder and Burchardkai last year. Some of whom are still going through training. We will be continuing in the same direction due to ever-increasing peak loads and thus fifty new employees will be joining our Container Terminal Burchardkai. We are also planning to increase staff numbers at our Container Terminal Altenwerder. We are committed to employing well-qualified skilled workers with the necessary experience with large-scale equipment in order to provide immediate support in handling the volumes which continued to increase this year. The appropriate steps are already underway.¡± Additionally, HHLA is expanding its training activities to ensure it has enough qualified personnel in medium and long term.  
Heinz Brandt highlighted the following issue: ¡°The constantly rising in peak loads place serious operational demands on logistics companies and mean significant strain for the staff members. Our employees have met these challenges head on in the past and remained highly professional. The HHLA Executive Board rebuts all of the talk about go-slows or absenteeism because of the World Cup.¡± 
Some background about the increasing peak loads: there were 63 ocean-going vessels that were handled at the HHLA Container Terminal Burchardkai with more than 3,000 movements per vessel in the first half of 2014, compared to 29 vessels in the first half of 2008. At the same time, the number of maximum movements per vessel of 3,922 containers in the first half of 2008 went up to 6,449 boxes in the first half of 2014. Peak loads for rail containers have gone up by 21 percent since 2008, while the peak loads for trucks is almost 11 percent higher than in 2008.