The "chief designer" of the former air cargo terminal, K K Yeung, former HACTL Deputy Managing Director and now Executive Director of Hong Kong Productivity Council, says he is "proud that EMSD has been innovative enough to come up with a purpose-built building on the basis of the original structure".

A pioneering expert in information technology and air cargo management in Hong Kong, Mr Yeung says HACTL2 was an indigenous, innovative solution to the problem of land constraints on air cargo handling capacity in the early 1990s, just as the air cargo industry and the Pearl River Delta economy were about to take off. His IT experience and intuition sensed the similarity between information flow and materials flow, and so the team designed the world's first "vertical" cargo handling concept, modelling it on random access disk-drive operations.

The right technology was identified in Germany in the form of stacker cranes for bulk cargo, and elevating transfer vehicles for cargo containers. With its innovative design and groundbreaking cargo handling system, HACTL2 was an immediate success and inspired many similar air cargo handling systems around the world. The vast investment put into the building and system was, in Mr Yeung's words, well worth it. "The enormous expansion of the manufacturing industry in the Pearl River Delta during the 1980s and the 1990s would not have been so successful without the corresponding expansion in Hong Kong's air cargo handling capacity," he says.

Housed in a building that was born out of the necessity to innovate, EMSD aims to uphold this proud legacy.