Our com­pany

The foun­da­tion of the HPG has al­lowed for the polder hold­ings to be bun­dled to­gether in one com­pany and to more clearly de­fine the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the roles within the or­ga­ni­za­tion. Thus strength­en­ing the spe­cial im­por­tance of pri­vate flood pro­tec­tion for the port.

As the owner and land user of nu­mer­ous areas in the Port of Ham­burg, the HPA has, to vary­ing de­grees, a pres­ence in 13 of 38 polder com­mu­ni­ties and is solely re­spon­si­ble for some of them. Re­gard­ing pri­vate flood pro­tec­tion, the HPA has trans­ferred its du­ties and other ac­tiv­i­ties to the HPG.

The pur­pose of the HPG is to pro­tect and carry out the con­struc­tion, main­te­nance and re­pair of flood pro­tec­tion fa­cil­i­ties and sys­tems, in­clud­ing their struc­tural mod­i­fi­ca­tion. The HPG is also re­spon­si­ble for any nec­es­sary mea­sures on or for the flood pro­tec­tion fa­cil­i­ties in order to pro­tect the prop­er­ties lo­cated in a polder from flood­ing in the event of a storm surge.

Pri­vate flood con­trol

Since the storm surge of 1976, which caused major dam­age in the Ham­burg port area, the city of Ham­burg has been pro­mot­ing the con­struc­tion of pri­vate flood pro­tec­tion fa­cil­i­ties, so-called pold­ers. Var­i­ous polder com­mu­ni­ties of dif­fer­ent legal forms have been formed for the joint man­age­ment of pold­ers that be­long to­gether.

The ad­van­tage of this pri­vately or­ga­nized flood con­trol sys­tem is that prop­erty users in the Port of Ham­burg can adapt flood pro­tec­tion to their com­pany-spe­cific re­quire­ments. In­ter­nal com­pany processes are thus af­fected as lit­tle as pos­si­ble. The con­struc­tion, main­te­nance and re­pair of the flood con­trol sys­tems and, above all, their de­fense in storm surge sit­u­a­tions are partly car­ried out by the com­pa­nies them­selves.

With this pri­vate flood con­trol, the two goals - the pro­tec­tion of the com­pa­nies and their fa­cil­i­ties and goods against floods and the min­i­mal re­stric­tion of their op­er­a­tional and pro­duc­tion processes dur­ing floods - are achieved in the best pos­si­ble way. The ef­fi­ciency of the Port of Ham­burg and its di­verse com­pa­nies thus en­sures the fu­ture vi­a­bil­ity of the port in the best pos­si­ble way and is thus an es­sen­tial lo­ca­tion fac­tor of the Port of Ham­burg.

Against the back­ground of pre­dicted in­creas­ing storm surge events with in­creas­ingly higher storm surge water lev­els, pri­vate flood con­trol is be­com­ing more and more im­por­tant.

Flood con­trol


HPA on In­sta­gram