One could imagine nicer job requirements than those of Thorsten Meyerfeldt. Since November 2022, the Hamburg native has taken over the management of the Munich container depot (CDM) in Unterföhring and the subsidiary TGM. His predecessor Rainer Jabke will soon be retiring after 27 years in this post. How things will continue with the container depot, which is one of the few large inland depots in the region, is currently in the stars. The lease expires at the end of October 2024, by then a new location must be found. So Meyerfeldt is looking, and urgently so. “By late summer 2023 at the latest, we need a new location, otherwise the container depot will have to cease operations in 2024,” he says.
The container depot has been based in Unterföhring since it was founded in 1978. Huge containers from overseas arrive there on more than 35,600 square meters to be loaded from freight trains onto trucks or vice versa. They are cleaned here, repaired if necessary and stored until they are needed again. The containers are stacked meters high on the site. Around 32,000 containers are delivered here and leave the premises every year. Having its own siding and being close to the transshipment station in Riem were the plus points of the location in the south of Unterföhring for decades. But the community has other plans for the future: They want to develop the site, which is already bordered by residential buildings from the south, as a new quarter.
The location already borders on the residential development and is intended to make room for further residential buildings.
(Photo: Catherine Hess)
From 2024 onwards, apartments for up to 2000 people as well as space for shops, a daycare center and possibly medical practices are to be built on the “Neuen Mitterfeld” between Mitterfeldallee and Neubruchstrasse. The family of Mayor Andreas Kemmelmeyer (non-partisan electorate), who owned the entire former gravel area totaling around 100,000 square meters for decades, sold the area for this purpose in 2022. A coalition of project developers and investors is now planning the new development under the name HVI Unterföhring.
The noisy trade should give way. Finding an alternative location within Unterfoehring for the container depot was never an issue, according to the Unterfoehringer town hall. When the management of the container depot approached the municipality a few years ago, they advised them to get in touch with the other municipalities in the Northern Alliance to find out whether suitable space was available there. “As far as we know, this does not seem to have existed,” said the statement from the town hall.
“Politics don’t give a damn about the logistics industry when it comes to spatial development,” complains Thorsten Meyerfeldt.
(Photo: Catherine Hess)
Meyerfeldt confirms this. His predecessor had been looking for land from the neighboring municipalities for years, but to this day without success. Meyerfeldt is therefore now trying to set everything in motion to find a possible location with an area of 40,000 square meters, as close as possible to the Riem transhipment station. He has contacted the surrounding municipalities, the Bavarian Ministry of Transport, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, various members of parliament from the region, but so far little concrete has come back apart from understanding words. “Politics don’t give a damn about the logistics industry when it comes to spatial development, even though it’s important for the economy,” criticized Meyerfeldt.
Of course, a container depot is not a high-gloss business with which a municipality can earn a lot of trade tax and which otherwise shines, Meyerfeldt also knows that. “We bring 150 to 200 truck movements a day,” he says. But he points to the importance of the depot for companies in the region, such as the car industry, which receives many parts from the Far East and in turn ships their finished cars.
The company covers half of the container capacities in the region
When the containers are not in use, they are stored empty in Unterföhring and can be ordered again quickly if required. “We cover about 50 percent of the container capacities in the Munich area,” says Meyerfeldt. “If they disappear, the companies would have to order the containers from further away and would have considerable additional costs.” In addition to the CDM, there are two other depot providers in the Munich area, one of which is very small. The nearest container depots are in Augsburg, Regensburg, Ulm and Nuremberg.
In addition to the costs, Meyerfeldt also emphasizes the environmental aspect: “We always talk about CO₂ reduction – this is a living example. Inland depots are important in order to avoid unnecessary trips by road or rail.” The forwarding merchant hopes that someone else will take up the issue and that new space will be found for the container depot. “There is still a lack of political will. Everyone ducks away and afterwards everyone says: How did that happen?”