Hapag-Lloyd’s acquisition of Deutsche Afrika-Linien (DAL) has been approved by worldwide antitrust authorities. The framework agreement was already signed in March 2022.
Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd, expects DAL’s acquisition to support Hapag-Lloyd to further grow in Africa. “We will now fully integrate the DAL’s container liner activities into our business,” he said.
DAL is an established liner shipping company for the transportation of containerised cargo and operates with four liner services between Europe, South Africa and the Indian Ocean. Headquartered in Hamburg, the Africa expert is represented with its own offices in Germany and South Africa as well as through third-party agents in 47 countries worldwide. Their liner business (including agencies) employs more than 150 people. DAL owns a 6,589 TEU container ship and operates a container fleet of around 17,800 boxes (owned and leased), which will be taken over as part of the acquisition.
The integration will be moving at a swift pace, and full commercial integration is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2022, according to a statement.
In 2021, Hapag-Lloyd also acquired Africa-specialised carrier NileDutch to strengthen its presence and service offering to and from West Africa. “This growth-oriented strategy was also underlined by several new office openings in Africa in 2021 and 2020,” noted the Hamburg-based container carrier.
