Falling prices for sea transport also caused sales and profits for the Hamburg container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd to collapse in the third quarter. In the period from July to September, the group result fell to 264 million euros, as Hapag-Lloyd AG announced on Thursday in Hamburg.
Compared to the same period in the record year 2022, this is a decrease of around 95 percent. Sales fell by more than half to around 4.10 billion euros.
As in previous quarters, the background is a normalization of global supply chains on the world’s oceans, which had been disrupted for years. According to Hapag-Lloyd, the average freight rate fell from $3,106 to $1,312 per 20-foot standard container (TEU) in the third quarter.
Given the huge disruptions in global supply chains, container shipping companies were among the winners of the corona pandemic. The prices for sea transport rose due to limited capacity – the supply is now significantly larger, which is driving prices down.
With a fleet of 264 container ships and a transport capacity of almost 2 million TEU, Hapag-Lloyd is considered the fifth largest shipping company in the world, behind Cosco, CMA CGM, Maersk and the Primus MSC.
