EN Operations MARKET ENVIRONMENT

MARKET ENVIRONMENT

The coronavirus pandemic presented the biggest challenge to global trade and the entire logistics industry in the 2020 financial year. This prompted us early on to focus on the safety and well-being of our employees and the supply chains of our customers. At the same time, we took counter measures on the cost side with our Performance Safeguarding Program. This enabled us to achieve savings of over USD 500 million using approximately 1,700 individual measures. This success can especially be attributed to our focused business model and efficient capacity management, which enable us to flexibly react to market changes.

FLEET

With 237 vessels and a shipping capacity of 1.7 million TEU as well as 1.6 million containers with a capacity of 2.7 million TEU, we are there for our customers worldwide. At the very beginning of the 2020 financial year, we successfully converted our vessel fleet to operate using low-sulphur fuel, thereby meeting all IMO 2020 requirements on time and reducing sulphur dioxide emissions by more than 70%. At the same time, we expanded our container fleet by purchasing or leasing roughly 300 TTEU of additional capacity in the 2020 financial year in order to meet the demand of our customers. While doing so, we also invested in the refrigerated-container market and expanded our market share in this attractive business segment.

SEAFARERS

Around 90% of all goods worldwide are transported by sea. This makes container shipping the most important means of transportation for international trade. Day after day, our more than 2,000 seafarers have been safely transporting all the goods entrusted to us and working tirelessly to keep our customers’ supply chains intact. Doing so was especially challenging during the reporting year, as the coronavirus pandemic made crew changes often impossible or only possible under extremely difficult conditions. Thanks to the hard work and outstanding dedication of our employees, we were able to keep our business operations up and running as smoothly as possible despite the pandemic and to thereby have a hand in keeping global trade functioning.