Shares in CargoLifter, the German airship company that is planning to build ‘flying cranes’, have taken a hammering on the back of negative German press reports.
The company floated in May 2000 with an opening share price of Euro 15. Within months the hype and excitement surrounding the project took the price up to Euro 28, but they have recently fallen to below Euro 11.
CargoLifter has finished construction of a massive 360m-long purpose-built hangar near Berlin. The first generation of CargoLifters, the CL160s, are scheduled to start work in 2004. The plan is that they will carry payloads of up to 160t at speeds of up to 100kmh and a maximum height of 2,000m non-stop over several thousand kilometres.
According to the Financial Times, investor confidence in the project has been knocked by reports that the planned prototype will be smaller than originally planned, have a lower lifting capacity and still faces technological problems.
The project is supported by leading German companies such as ABB, Siemens and Liebherr which is supplying the winching mechanism.