Cargolifter AG

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Exterior view of hangar built for Cargolifter.

Interior (note the three people at the lower left)

The company Cargolifter AG was created in September, 1996 in Wiesbaden, Germany with the goal of offering a logistics service based on point-to point transport of heavy or outsized loads. This service was based on the development of a heavy lift airship, the CL160, with a planned capacity of 160 tonnes.^[1]

In May 2000, there was a public stock offering and the shareholder structure was characterized by a high proportion of small investors, attracted by substantial press coverage of the new breakthrough technologies being promised.

The planned large airship "CL 160" was never built, though there was a considerable amount of design and development work undertaken. The technical complexity (something akin to a designing an airliner, but with less tested technology), limited funding (a fraction of the funding available for the development of a new airliner) and very short development timescale meant the programme was always going to be risky.

A small prototype, named 'Joey', was built, in order to test concepts on a small scale. A prototype of a smaller transportation balloon "CL 75 Aircrane" was built but destroyed in a storm in July 2002. Despite this, in 2002, a contract with Boeing was agreed, for the joint study of a lighter-than-air stratospheric platform.^[2]

[edit] Insolvency

On June 7, 2002 the company announced insolvency and proceedings began the following month. The whereabouts of the 300 million euros of shareholder funds, from over 70,000 investors, is still unclear.

The prototype of the smaller transportation balloon "CL 75 Aircrane", which was tested for the first time in October 2001, is probably a self-development. This unit was manufactured by an American company (AdvanTek International,LLC) on behalf of Cargolifter. A "CL 75 Aircrane" as well as 25 options (at a unit price of 10 million U.S. dollars), was sold to the Canadian company Heavy Elevator Canada Inc., in which the CargoLifter AG was involved to at least 20 per cent. The contract never became effective.

In June 2003, the company's facilities - with the future airship hall being a technological marvel in itself, a freestanding steel-dome barrel-dome construction large enough to fit the Eiffel Tower (lying down) - were sold off for less than 20% of their construction cost. The land was developed as a 'tropical paradise' themed vacation resort called Tropical Islands, which opened in 2004.

The Skyship airship, which had been purchased by Cargolifter for training and research purposes (see picture), was sold to Swiss Skycruise and used in Athens for flights connected with the Olympic games.