Our Strategy 2023 targets remain valid, but we will focus even more on Quality and Sustainability

PROFITABILITY

We reached our financial and profitability targets earlier than expected, but we need to be vigilant when the market environment normalizes.

Global Player

We are a global player, but high industry profits enable smaller competitors to catch up. We therefore want to strengthen our presence in a variety of growth markets.

NUMBER ONE FOR QUALITY

We made good progress to improve quality and to deliver higher service levels but the pandemic has set back our achievements. We need to address these challenges.

SUSTAINABILITY

We have met our environmental targets but future challenges require a more holistic sustainability strategy and more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Profitability

Sustainable profitability over the entire economic cycle is an essential building block of our business strategy. In the reporting year, in a market environment with exceptionally high spot rates, we achieved all financial and profitability targets of our Strategy 2023 earlier than expected and more than earned our cost of capital. Furthermore, we have gradually reduced our liabilities since the acquisition of UASC in 2017 and as at the end of 2021 have a net liquidity of EUR 2.2 billion. In light of this, we consider ourselves well equipped for the challenges of tomorrow.

Global player

Profitable growth is firmly entrenched in our Strategy 2023: we want to grow in attractive niche markets and consolidate our global market share of around 10%. We expanded our market position in strategically important target markets such as India and Africa in the reporting year and continued to strengthen our global presence with new offices, for example in Kenya, Senegal and Morocco. The acquisition of Africa specialist NileDutch in particular allowed us to further strengthen our market position along the West African coast and integrate Africa even more into our global network. At the same time, we also expanded our attractive reefer container business.

NUMBER ONE FOR QUALITY

Our ambition is nothing less than to become the number one for quality in our industry. That is why in the reporting year we launched five additional quality promises that form the foundation for our partnership with our customers and against which we are transparently measured. We also continued development on our online booking tool Quick Quotes and added new digital services to our offering, thereby creating added value for our customers, which is also reflected in increasing demand: almost a quarter of all bookings in 2021 were made via our web channel, which is equivalent to around 2.7 million containers.

Sustainability

Climate change, diversity and social engagement – these topics are more relevant than ever and reason enough to expand our Strategy 2023 with a fourth pillar: sustainability. Shipping must become even more sustainable and our course is set. Our expanded sustainability strategy, which we presented in November 2021, shows exactly what we will focus on and where we will increase our contribution. Concrete targets will allow us to gradually strengthen our sustainability contribution and achieve continuous improvements.

MORE ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY