CargoCity: Connectivity at the highest level
Freight giant with big plans for the future
Frankfurt Airport is a hive of activity 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In 2025, 63.2 million people took off and landed here – more than at any other airport in Germany. Covering a total area of 2,300 hectares, the site comprises two passenger terminals and four runways.
The airport also boasts a vast logistics infrastructure, as more than two million tonnes are handled annually from the Rhine metropolis and shipped all over the world. As the airport operator, Fraport AG aims to further increase handling capacity. The ‘Cargo Hub Master Plan’ envisages a cargo volume of three million tonnes by 2040.
CargoCity South – Europe’s logistics hub
Thanks to efficient air freight logistics and ideal location conditions, CargoCity Süd has been one of Europe’s most sought-after logistics hubs since 1996. Numerous international service providers and logistics companies, such as DHL Global Forwarding Freight, are based here and ensure seamless connections between air, land and sea transport.
The CCS Cargoport logistics centre, situated in the immediate vicinity of the A3 and A5 motorways, is also part of CargoCity Süd. This vast freight and freight forwarding centre comprises a two-storey hall, each storey measuring approximately 10,000 square metres, as well as over 10,000 square metres of office space, and is leased to Lufthansa Cargo AG.
Infrastructure that does the heavy lifting
As modern drainage systems form the basis of a functioning logistics hub, old, damaged drainage channels have been removed around the logistics centre as part of the site’s further development. This was necessary because the channel covers were loose and, in some places, broken along their entire length. The side walls of the channels also showed significant damage due to the extreme stresses caused by heavy goods traffic.
To minimise disruption to daily freight traffic, the necessary construction work was carried out by Possehl Spezialbau GmbH & Co. KG exclusively during the night. To remove the old, damaged drainage channels, it was first necessary to make a cut in the adjacent concrete at intervals of approx. 3 cm on both sides of the channel cover, running along the channel to a depth of 30 centimetres. The channel elements could then be removed or chiselled out.
Before installing the new drainage channels, the concrete contact surfaces were cleaned and coated with an epoxy-based bonding agent. The HYDROblock channel elements were then laid on a 4-centimetre-thick bed of epoxy mortar. To ensure the necessary stability of the channel elements, the voids on either side of the channel (3 cm wide / 30 cm deep) were filled layer by layer with epoxy resin mortar up to the top edge and compacted.
Logistics areas, often covering several thousand square metres as in CargoCity Süd, place high demands on the design of the surfaces. At the same time, a drainage system must ensure that surface water is safely discharged. The project planners opted for HYDROblock® DN 200 drainage channels with an inlet cross-section of 718 cm²/m.