Hapag-Lloyd boss Rolf Habben Jansen always seems open and relaxed in his own way – regardless of whether the largest German shipping company is currently implementing a difficult merger with a competitor. Or whether, as happened in 2022, it will achieve a record profit for the second time in a row in the company’s 175-year history – operating earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of 17.5 billion euros. This is probably the highest profit that a Hamburg company has ever made. In 2021, the operating profit was around 9.4 billion euros. In 2020 it was 1.3 billion euros – with the pandemic still having less of an impact.
Dutchman Habben Jansen, 56, CEO since 2014, remains down to earth as he classifies the figures for the past year and the outlook for the coming period at the New Year’s dinner on Tuesday evening in front of the business press. He repeats what he has been saying for months: The extreme results of 2021 and 2022 were caused by the upheavals and shortages in the shipping market as a result of the pandemic, the market has long since returned to normal. Hapag-Lloyd also has to “fight for every container” with customers again. The party is over.”
It is particularly exciting to see how the relationship between Hapag-Lloyd and its hometown of Hamburg is developing in these economically wild times. In the years after 2008, the Hanseatic city saved the shipping company in a consortium, primarily together with the logistics entrepreneur Klaus-Michael Kühne, from a possible hostile takeover by NOL in Singapore and a subsequent break-up. After the later IPO of Hapag-Lloyd, Hamburg initially paid for this with write-downs on its shares in the hundreds of millions.
Since the shipping company’s recovery, however, after its merger first with the container division of CSAV in Chile and then with UASC in Dubai, the flow of money from the headquarters on Ballindamm to the accounts of the municipal investment company HGV has not stopped. The city of Hamburg holds 13.9 percent of the shares – last year it received around 860 million euros in dividends from Hapag-Lloyd, this year it should be well over the billion euro mark. Hamburg has long since made up for the losses from the once weak share price and the lack of dividends in the past.
Hapag-Lloyd is currently the powerhouse of Hamburg’s maritime economy – and the management does not shy away from criticizing its home port when it deems it appropriate. In the logistical chaos of late last summer, the shipping company pointed out to WELT AM SONNTAG that Hamburg was the port with by far the longest delays in the world for Hapag-Lloyd and its partners in the shipping alliance The Alliance at this time.
Conversely, Habben Jansen has no problem putting the problems with the Elbe deepening into perspective. After the ninth deepening of the Elbe, the federal waterway administration can currently only guarantee an additional draft of around 90 centimeters – instead of the originally planned additional 1.90 meter draft for the large seagoing vessels. This is definitely relevant for Hapg-Lloyd. The largest ships in the fleet, each with a total capacity of around 20,000 container units (TEU), are among the largest in the world, with high drafts even when they are not fully loaded on the Lower Elbe. But Habben Jansen says: “For us it has had relatively little importance in recent times. After the Elbe deepening, there is more depth than before, and that has helped us. I assume that the fairway will be continuously dredged and that the promises for the higher drafts will be kept in the future. In any case, last year we had much bigger problems than the deepening of the Elbe.”
The shipping company’s composure could also have something to do with the fact that Hapag-Lloyd invests part of its high profits in stakes in port terminals around the world, in Egypt, Chile, Italy and most recently in India. This gives the shipping company more flexibility in controlling its liner services. Last year, Hapag-Lloyd also acquired a 30 percent share in the operation of the Eurogate container terminal at JadeWeserPort in Wilhelmshaven – and immediately began to integrate Wilhelmshaven into the logistics of its shipping lines, especially with a direct express service between Wilhelmshaven and Dachan Bay near the Chinese ports of Hong Kong and Shenzhen.
Hapag-Lloyd discontinued this service once the pandemic in Europe had subsided and the ports had eased, but Wilhelmshaven remains the focus of the shipping company: “Wilhelmshaven helped us incredibly in 2022. Our volume of container handling there will grow,” says Habben Jansen. First of all, the JadeWeserPort will now have a regular liner service between Europe and the Far East. In the future, this could “also be at the expense of Hamburg, but also of Rotterdam” in terms of cargo quantities.
But Hamburg remains the home of Hapag-Lloyd – and the shipping company wants to emphasize this at a special ceremony this year, says Habben Jansen. On October 2nd, the day before German reunification, Elke Büdenbender, the wife of the Federal President, is to christen the “Berlin Express” in the port of Hamburg, the first in a new series of container freighters for Hapag-Lloyd. With 23,600 TEU, she will be the largest ship that has ever sailed under the German flag.
