Recently, German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd completed its latest acquisition and officially took over the business of its compatriot ship management company Hamburger Lloyd. It is reported that after the transaction is completed, Hapag-Lloyd will take over the technical management of 29 container ships and incorporate 35 employees of Hamburger Lloyd into Hapag-Lloyd’s team. Hamburger Lloyd founder and managing director Hauke Pane will continue in an advisory role until the handover is completed next year.
According to information, Hamburger Lloyd was established in 2007 and was initially backed by Hamburg Bank MMWarburg and German investor HansaHamburg. At its peak, the company was both a shipowner and a ship manager, with interests in container ships, dry bulk carriers and product tankers.
Hapag-Lloyd and Hamburger Lloyd are both located in Hamburg and the two companies have a long-term cooperative relationship. In 2021, the latter will deliver its last four container ships of 4,620 teu to RHL Co.RHL Incordia and RHL Conscientia (both built 2012) , RHL Calliditas and RHL Constantia (both built 2013) were sold to Hapag-Lloyd, which retained technical management of the vessels.
In the following three years, the cooperation between the two parties continued to deepen, and the number of ships managed by Hamburger Lloyd for Hapag-Lloyd gradually expanded from the initial four to the current 29, ranging from small ships such as Cabinda Express with 600 TEUs to large ships with 16,000 TEUs.