The handling of general cargo in seaports is a time-consuming and resource-intensive activity. The implementation of novel handling technologies opens new potential to improve the handling process and its sustainability as well. This paper introduces a magnet system based approach for handling steel products in seaports and addresses its economical and ecological potentials. It presents a detailed event driven process chain model (EPC) of the handling process and an analysis of the corresponding potentials. Besides process related potentials like decreasing operative costs or increasing the process stability, this paper presents the capability of this new technology to reduce the ecological effects by saving dunnage.