Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) is owned by Italy's Aponte family. Its subsidiary, Port of Hamburg Beteiligungsgesellschaft, has won approval to take a 49.9% stake in German terminal operator group Hamburger Hafen und Logistik (HHLA).
ADVERTISEMENTThe city of Hamburg, whose parliament approved the deal, will retain the remaining 50.1% stake. The deal still needs the EU Commission's approval for the acquisition to go ahead.
Hamburg and MSC will both manage HHLA as a joint venture with MSC gaining a 40-year contract for the joint venture.
MSC is owned by the Italian Aponte family, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. It has offices in 155 countries.
HHLA operates and owns three of the four container terminals at the Port of Hamburg, as well as a large portion of the port itself. These include the Container Terminal Burchardkai, the Container Terminal Altenwerder and the Container Terminal Tollerort.
Apart from those, the company also owns Container Terminal Odessa, in Ukraine and Container Terminal Estonia in Tallinn. HHLA also has multi-purpose and roll-on-roll-off (RoRo) facilities in Hamburg, Trieste and Tallinn.
The takeover offer for HHLA was first revealed last September, with MSC highlighting that the deal would help increase and expand the container-handling facilities at the port of Hamburg.
However, the deal was also met with resistance including from trade unions such as Ver.di, who were concerned about job losses. The Hamburg and Bremerhaven ports have recently seen a number of worker strikes over pay disputes.
HHLA launches first test field for hydrogen-powered port logistics
HHLA recently made strides in decarbonising logistics, by introducing its first test field for hydrogen-powered port logistics. This was done in partnership with Clean Port & Logistics (CPL). HHLA also launched a hydrogen refuelling station at the Hamburg port.
The above moves will help the company more rapidly switch to emissions-free port operations and heavy-goods logistics.
Angela Titzrath, CEO of HHLA, said on 2 July: "We're pleased to open the first test field for hydrogen-powered port logistics today. It enables us to test future technologies, gather valuable data and evaluate the results. In this way, we are shaping the sustainable future of logistics and continuing to invest in innovative technologies.
"We are sharing our findings with companies facing similar challenges in order to develop climate-friendly transport solutions together. Our objective is clear: We want to decarbonise the logistics sector and achieve our target of climate-neutral operations throughout the group by 2040."
