Hapag-Lloyd wants to assert itself on the world market with a new strategy
Published: Tuesday, Apr 16th 2024, 16:00
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The long-established Hamburg-based shipping company Hapag-Lloyd intends to significantly increase its global holdings in container terminals to more than 30. "Our goal is to expand our terminal portfolio by up to 10-15 terminals by 2030," said Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen on Tuesday when presenting the new corporate strategy.
At the same time, costs are to be reduced by up to 20 percent and the fleet's CO2 emissions by a third by 2030 - while punctuality is to be increased from around 50 percent to more than 80 percent. Among other things, the aim is to cement its position as the fifth-largest shipping company in the world and to grow faster than the market in key regions such as Africa, India, Southeast Asia and the Pacific region.
According to its own figures, Hapag-Lloyd has 266 container ships and an annual transport volume of 11.9 million standard containers (TEU). Only the container shipping companies MSC from Switzerland, Maersk from Denmark, CMA/CGM from France and Cosco from China are larger. The Singaporean container shipping company One and the Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen are relatively close behind Hapag-Lloyd.
Habben Jansen expressed concern about the situation in the Middle East. Due to attacks by Houthi militias on merchant ships, Hapag-Lloyd has been making its container giants take a long detour around the Cape of Good Hope instead of through the Suez Canal for some time now. This has no impact on the strategic goals for 2030, said Habben Jansen. "In the short term, however, it puts us under a lot of pressure." This is because the detour would increase emissions in two ways: firstly, Hapag-Lloyd would need more fuel due to the longer route, and secondly, the ships would have to sail faster in order to keep to schedules.
Hapag-Lloyd is striving to do the opposite in order to reduce both fuel costs and CO2 emissions. Over the past one and a half years, it has been shown that the fleet is traveling 1.0 to 1.5 knots slower on average. If the ships were to sail three knots slower, this would mean a reduction of almost five million tons of CO2 - with a total volume of around 15.5 million tons at Hapag-Lloyd, said Habben Jansen. "So the effect is really, really big." To reduce costs, Hapag-Lloyd is also relying on larger ships and higher productivity.
In order to achieve the corporate goal of complete decarbonization by 2045, Hapag-Lloyd is reportedly also focusing on researching and procuring "green" fuels such as "green" methanol. The shipping company and Seaspan Corporation are therefore also having five 10 100-TEU container ships converted to dual-fuel engines that can also run on methanol. The conversions are scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2026, take up to 90 days and cost a good 110 million euros.
©Keystone/SDA
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