Between 2012 and 2017, DSV transported a total of 385,000 tonnes of concrete parts through the streets of Copenhagen, Denmark and our innovative solution spared the city half the amount of traffic and CO2 emissions compared to the original plans.

The Copenhagen Metro project

The Copenhagen Metro (Denmark) opened its most recent extension in September this year after several years of construction work in and under the Copenhagen city centre.

Construction of the 15.5 km so-called “Cityring” required 22,000 concrete rings to form the tunnels. Each concrete ring came in 6 parts weighing a total of 17.5 tons. The concrete parts were transported on chartered Ro-Ro vessels from Sassnitz in Germany to the Port of Copenhagen in Denmark. It required 135 shipments, each comprising almost 1,000 concrete parts. From there, they had to be transported by road to three different destinations in the inner city.

Originally, the road transports were planned to take place with six parts for one concrete ring on a truck at a time. Based on DSV and the developer’s common focus on getting the most environmentally friendly transport solution possible while disturbing the traffic as little as possible, DSV’s project department went to work to improve our offer.

DSV’s innovative approach

With a decision to use new, specially designed, 4 axle flatbed trailers as opposed to traditional 3 axle trailers, it was possible to load two entire concrete rings on each truck. In addition, we managed to reduce the size of the padding layers between the 6 pieces of concrete stacked on the trailers and thereby lower the total height of the truck-load with 30 cm. Although it does not sound like much, it provided the team a lot more flexibility concerning choice of route from the port to either of the three destinations as we could use routes on which bridges would otherwise have hindered passage. As a result, we spared the city 50% of the traffic and thus CO2 emissions compared to the original project plans.