Goodbye, Hamburg Süd! Goodbye, SeaLand!!
Hamburg Süd, a world-renowned shipping brand founded in 1871 with a history of 152 years, is about to say goodbye to everyone. Denmark local time on January 27, Maersk Group officially issued an announcement announcing the integration of its multiple brands, including Hamburg Süd, Sealand, and Twill, which will gradually transition to the brand Maersk. This means that the two shipping brands with a long history, Hamburg Süd, and Sealand, will disappear from now on.
In addition, several other shipping and logistics-related brands under Maersk will gradually be merged under the brand Maersk. Maersk also announced on its official website that several brands such as Hamburg Süd, Sealand, and Twill have retired and integrated them into Maersk.
Hamburg Süd and SeaLand will be integrated
Integrating Maersk’s own brand is a part of Maersk’s comprehensive strategy to unify the Maersk structure, remove operational barriers within the organization and align the Maersk structure with customer needs. Just a few days ago, Maersk and MSC, the world’s largest container shipping company, announced that they would end the cooperation of the 2M alliance after 2025. A few days later, Maersk announced an important strategic plan again. On January 27, Hamburg Süd and SeaLand Maersk issued a statement saying, “We will continue to work on simplifying the complex supply chain and ensuring seamless integration for customers. We provide our services under one brand—that is, the brand of our parent company Maersk.” This means that Maersk Group is planning to streamline its brand structure, remove the above two old shipping brands with a long history and integrate them into Maersk. However, according to the official statements issued by the mentioned companies, there is no clear timetable at present. Hamburg Süd was founded in Germany in 1871 and was acquired by Maersk in 2017.
Sealand is generally considered to be the shipping company founded by Malcolm McLean. At that time, he converted an oil tanker into a container ship, carrying a standardized 35-foot container to achieve its first voyage. This company can be regarded as the world’s first container shipping company. In fact, the company’s history can be traced back to 1931, Maersk acquired Sealand in 1999, and then the company was better known as Maersk Sealand. The brand was dropped for a while back in 2006. In 2014, Maersk restarted the brand and applied it to some regional shipping markets, but in the future, we may see the SeaLand brand be sealed again.
More brands will be integrated
It is worth mentioning that this round of strategic reform of Maersk will not only affect the two brands of SeaLand and Hamburg Süd. According to the plan, Maersk’s shipping and logistics brands such as Twill, Senator, LF Logistics, and Martin Bencher will also be gradually consolidated into the Maersk brand. Hamburg Süd stated in a statement on its official website that in addition to us, Sealand, Twill, and other new brands that have joined the Maersk family will also be gradually integrated under the Maersk brand. In 2020, Maersk consolidated its shipping brand Safmarine and logistics business brand Damco. It is worth mentioning that with the consolidation of the brand, some organizations and business departments will inevitably be streamlined, which means that layoffs are inevitable.
Starting in 2016, under the leadership of former CEO Soren Skou, Maersk decided to formally transform into an end-to-end container-integrated logistics service provider. When Maersk explained the mentioned brand integration plan, it said that although they are now a company with more influence in the transportation and logistics supply chain, they must bear in mind that parts of Maersk may be established with third parties. Customer or supplier relationships and another part of Maersk may compete with the same third party. They must always ensure that third-party data that Maersk obtains from a customer or supplier relationship does not flow to another part of Maersk that competes with the third party.
