On 07 June 2002 the company announced insolvency, and liquidation proceedings began the following month. The sale of one CL 75 Aircrane along with 25 options (at a unit price of USD $10 million), was later planned to the Canadian company Heavy Elevator Canada Inc., a deal with which CargoLifter AG was at least 20 percent involved. The loadframe of this unit was engineered by American company AdvanTek International LLC, on behalf of Cargolifter AG. It represented a new stage in full-scale experimental purposes. The "CL 75 AirCrane" prototype, filled with 110,000 m 3 of helium, was taken out of the hangar for the first time in October 2001. Despite the setback, an agreement was reached with Boeing in 2002 for the joint study of a lighter-than-air stratospheric platform. Another aircraft, the "CL 75 Aircrane" transportation balloon prototype, of similar size (61 m in diameter) and height (87 m) to the CL 160, was built but destroyed in a storm in July 2002. The hanger was also equipped with a 180 m cutting table to manufacture the airship's envelope.Ī small manned prototype named 'Joey' was built in order to test project concepts on a reduced scale. The hangar (360 m long, 220 m wide and 106 m high), a technological marvel in itself, was a freestanding steel- dome "barrel-bowl" construction large enough to fit the Eiffel Tower on its side. The hangar for production and operation of the CL160 and engineering team facilities were built on a unused military airfield, acquired to enable development and operations. The technical complexity (something akin to designing an airliner with less vetted technology) along with limited funding (a fraction of the funding available for the development of new airliners), and short development timeline meant that program challenges were underestimated, making the project relatively risky. The first CL 160 airship was never built, though a considerable amount of design and development work was undertaken. A public stock offering took place in May 2000, and the resulting shareholder structure was characterized by a high proportion of small investors, attracted by substantial press coverage of the new breakthrough technologies being promised. KG" company seeks to continue selling the lighter-than-air technology.Ĭargolifter AG was created on 01 September, 1996 in Wiesbaden, Germany. Today the shareholder-founded "CL CargoLifter GmbH & Co. This service was based on the development of a heavy lift airship, the CL160, a 550,000 m 3 vessel designed to carry a 160-tonne payload. Most of the share capital of the company is owned by private individuals.The now-defunct Cargolifter AG was a company created to offer logistical services through point-to point transport of heavy and outsized loads. office and is planning to relocate its Berlin office to a hangar site in Brand, in the German state of Brandenburg.ĬargoLifter has about 500 employees and 72,000 shareholders. “The scope of the new insolvency legislation is to be used to order and streamline the group structure together with a reputable and experienced insolvency administrator,” CargoLifter said. Based in Berlin, the company has been working on the development of inflammable helium-filled 260-meter-long airships. “For reasons of insolvency the CargoLifter AG board of managing directors… filed an application for the opening of insolvency proceedings on the assets of CargoLifter AG at the Cottbus District Court,” the company said in a statement.įounded in 1996, CargoLifter was set up to develop, construct, operate and market large airships for the worldwide transportation of large and heavy goods. AIRSHIP FIRM CARGOLIFTER FILES FOR BANKRUPTCYĬargoLifter AG, the German company that aims to develop large airships to carry heavy cargo, has filed for bankruptcy after running into cash problems.
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