Konecranes (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.

A container depot on the roof

Cogent One-Stop Logistics Hub at 1 Buroh Crescent is one of Singapore's largest integrated logistics facilities: over 1.6 million square feet of gross floor area, more than 110 metres tall, with five storeys of ramp-up warehousing and, on the roof, a container depot — the arrangement Cogent patented and both companies call the world's first. The depot stacks empty containers up to fifteen high, against the nine-high limit Cogent cites for conventional ground depots, and stores up to 16,000 TEUs on a fraction of the land.

Konecranes made the roof work as a depot. In April 2016 it received an order from SH Cogent Logistics Pte Ltd for two container stacking cranes — electric overhead travelling cranes with a lifting capacity of 12 tons, sized for empty-container handling — delivered in the first quarter of 2017. Konecranes' equipment had to meet what it describes as stringent requirements: short cycle times and 24/7 operation.

The economics of the design are simple. Because the depot sits in the same building as the warehouses, a shipping container collected from the depot reaches the warehouse in minutes, and the separate road trip to return or collect an empty container disappears from the transport cycle. Because overhead cranes replace reach stackers, less floor space is lost to vehicle manoeuvres — and Cogent cites the elimination of container-toppling risk as a safety gain.

Port technology, applied at altitude

A rooftop depot is not a port, and the companies are candid about the differences: lower-tonnage empty containers, tight space limitations and a significantly higher handling height than terminal cranes normally face. Konecranes adapted accordingly — by its account, adjusting taxi speed, anti-sway and target positioning for the application, while Cogent's open-air roof carries metal cladding on its sides to shield the stacks from wind.

The cranes carry the smart features Konecranes fits to its heavy industrial equipment: target positioning, hoist synchronisation, hook levelling and energy-saving regenerative drives. TRUCONNECT remote monitoring reports operating statistics from the cranes — running time, motor starts, work cycles and safety-related events such as emergency stops — so utilisation and condition are visible without a technician on the roof.

The Gul Circle operation

Konecranes (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. operates from 33 Gul Circle in the western industrial belt, and the site is the group's Port Services hub for the Asia-Pacific region. Two lines run from Singapore. Port equipment covers the container-handling range — rubber-tyred gantry (RTG) cranes, rail-mounted gantry (RMG) cranes, automated stacking cranes, mobile harbour cranes, straddle carriers and lift trucks — with port services spanning preventive maintenance, inspections, modernisation, drive and automation retrofits, remote support and operator training.

Industrial equipment covers overhead cranes, workstation lifting systems, jib cranes and chain hoists, including equipment rated for explosive atmospheres. Maintenance runs preventive and predictive, with remote condition monitoring through TRUCONNECT; spare parts and service data run through the Konecranes Portal. The customer industries the group lists for the Singapore market range from shipyards and petroleum and gas to metals production, power, automotive, paper and forest, waste-to-energy and general manufacturing.

The group behind it

The Singapore company is part of Konecranes Plc, listed on Nasdaq Helsinki (KCR), with around 16,500 professionals in over 50 countries across three business areas: Industrial Service, Industrial Equipment and Port Solutions. For 2025 the group reported sales of EUR 4,187.8 million, record order intake of EUR 4,389.3 million, a year-end order book of EUR 2,988.4 million and a comparable EBITA margin of 14.0 per cent — its most profitable year on record.

The arc matters for Singapore. When the Cogent order was signed in April 2016, the group's prior-year sales were EUR 2,126 million with 11,900 employees; sales have roughly doubled since. A customer commissioning cranes here is buying from a local service operation with a global installed base and balance sheet behind it — and, as the Cogent project showed, the local office is close enough to answer in twenty minutes.