abh celebrates its 40th anniversary
The abh INGENIEUR-TECHNIK GmbH was founded 40 years ago on May 1st, 1981 by Dipl. Ing. Werner Aulig, Dipl. Ing. Peter Berg and Dipl. Ing. Werner Hesse, who were also namesake for the abh abbreviation. Nowadays the company is led by Dipl. Ing. Richard Vogt, who has been with abh and contributed with his knowledge and ideas for over three decades.
abh was founded out of the idea that “sometimes you just have to do something yourself”. It all began with the company headquarters at Nesserlander Str. 1 in the Handelshof. Initially, the customer base consisted of the local shipyard and port industry, as well as local shipping companies. Since Abh has always been very innovative and progressive, the customer base developed very quickly and far beyond East Frisia and the Emsland. The core aspects of the work were initially all kinds of calculations in shipbuilding, such as stability for ships, strength calculations, vibration calculations and statics. Abh mainly developed its own programs for this purpose, which were unreservedly recognized by the responsible authorities and classification societies.
From 1990 abh began to develop his own ship designs. Worth mentioning is the 2,000 tdw multi-purpose ship, which was built immediately after the fall of the Wall in the new federal states at the Rosslau shipyard for the shipping company Bockstiegel from Emden. Two years later, the company took a big step. Together with the Krey shipping company from Leer, they ventured to China, where an 8-series 550 TEU container ship was built. This marked a major milestone in the company. Since then, various ship designs have followed up to the present day, both for container ships up to 3500 TEU, heavy lift ships up to 20,000 tdw, various sizes of multi-purpose ships to refrigerated ships and many more.
From the year 2000 the development of the Transshipper Isken for the shipping company Oldendorff from Lübeck for Iskenderun in Turkey took place. The Transshipper is currently the largest floating unloading system for reloading coal from large bulk carriers into smaller transport barges. A unique construction was thus developed to transfer coal from a 200,000 tdw bulker to barges on the deep sea so that the local power station can be supplied with coal.
In 2006, abh took the step into a newly built company building at the Nesserlanderstr. 76 in Emden and the first step into the wind-offshore industry. Various installation vessels and jack-up platforms as well as the semi-submersible were developed for the Strabag company. As before, during the large, international and demanding projects, abh always stuck to its roots and remained loyal to its customer base in Germany. For example, abh not only developed a container ship series together with the former Cassenes shipyard but also the yacht-passenger-cruiser MS Sunbeam I and II and the Artic Cruiser MS “Orion” for the Hegemann group in Berne and Wolgast, for which also container, Ro-ro and heavy lift ships were developed.
In the following year 2007, the design of the cutter suction dredger Pirat X followed for the construction company Johann Bunte from Papenburg, which was used, among other things, for the expansion of the Jade-Weser Port in Wilhelmshaven. However, Abh was aiming for even larger dimensions and so in 2008 the entry into the size of 2800-3500 TEU container ships followed. These ships were also built for German and international shipping companies in China. In addition, abh developed a heavy-lift ship series of up to 14,000 tdw up to 2014 for the Jüngerhans, Bockstiegel shipping company and the US-based Intermarine shipping company. Nowadays the Amber series is successfully chartered by the Briese shipping company with BBC.
To this day alone, abh INGENIEUR-TECHNIK GmbH has developed and designed over 500 ships that have successfully sailed the world’s oceans and made a very appealing impression on the industry.
Between all the large and significant projects, however, one developed project in East Frisia is particularly dear to the heart. The new construction of the Frisia III ferry at the Cassens shipyard for the Norden-Frisia-AG. The Frisia III is the shipping company’s largest car and passenger ferry, which has been running scheduled services between the East Frisian island of Norderney and Norddeich since 2015.
In the following year, abh designed a new generation of 1,162 TEU container ships with the project name Bengal Max. This type of ship was built on the Mawei Shipyard in China on behalf of ASSC Hamburg and MTT Shipping Malaysia.
In 2018 abh invested in a 3D scanner, which quickly paid for itself. The company sensed a unique opportunity as a pioneer in the surveying industry and once again successfully landed the contracts.
abh looks proudly and gratefully on 40 years, with good and well-trained employees who are committed and loyal to its company back. We are looking forward to the next 40 years with further challenging projects, competent partners and successful cooperation with our customers.
