Maersk to Acquire Hamburg Süd

Maersk Line is to acquire Hamburg Süd from Oetker Group by end 2017, parent A.P. Moller-Maersk said on Thursday.

Hamburg Süd operates 130 container vessels with a container capacity of 625,000 TEU. It has 5,960 employees in more than 250 offices across the world and markets its services through the Hamburg Süd, CCNI (based in Chile) and Aliança (based in Brazil) brands. In 2015, Hamburg Süd had a turnover of $6,726 million of which $6,261 million stems from its container line activities. Hamburg Süd and Aliança will continue as separate brands.

With the acquisition, Maersk Line will have container capacity of around 3.8 million TEU (3.1 million TEU) and an 18.6 percent (15.7 percent) global capacity share. The combined fleet will consist of 741 container vessels with an average age of 8.7 years (9.2 years). Maersk markets its services through the Maersk Line, Safmarine, SeaLand (Intra-Americas), MCC Transport (Intra-Asia) and Seago Line (Intra-Europe) brands.

The deal will be the first full acquisition by Maersk since a takeover of P&O Nedlloyd a decade ago. Family-owned French group CMA CGM sealed an acquisition this year of Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines. Last week, the European Commission gave conditional approval to a merger between German container shipping line Hapag-Lloyd and the United Arab Shipping Company.

(MarEx)