A.P. Moller - Maersk set to acquire Senator International, Hamburg-based freight forwarder

We at Maersk deeply value your partnership and engagement with us, and we continue to look for ways to enhance the resilience and agility of your supply chain. We are constantly working towards creating opportunities to bring further ease, flexibility and speed into your logistics network.

More and more, we are seeing the knock-on effects of the pandemic in the world of logistics with widespread port congestions and production issues. Other factors, such as the Suez channel blocking and the current limitations on inland haulage options, further underlines the need for resilience and agility in logistics and supply chains. Coupled with increasing consumer demand, we have received more and more requests from customers for alternative means of cargo transportation. Therefore, we are pleased to announce that we intend to acquire Senator International Freight Forwarding Group, a Hamburg-based global freight forwarder. Senator is a noted industry partner, by both customers and carriers, and brings with it a solid network of own controlled flights, intercontinental rail, warehousing, distribution and packaging across the Americas, Asia, Europe and South Africa.

As a recognised player in the logistics industry, Senator will add their broad expertise to Maersk’s existing widespread logistical network. Senator’s services and controlled capacity further gives you, our customers, increased flexibility to shape your supply chain, allowing you to build robustness through streamlined solutions, as well as allowing you to be even more adaptive to fluctuating market trends and lack of predictability by utilising rail, shipping and air freight with ease when designing your supply chain. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and the transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2022.

In addition to Senator’s strong air freight offering, we are also expanding our own-controlled fleet with three leased cargo planes operational from 2022 and purchasing two Boeing aircraft newbuilds to be deployed by 2024.

Through this multifaceted expansion, our intention is for you to be able to choose from multiple flows to market, allowing you to avoid some of the hurdles we are facing today, whilst also improving your flexibility and chain resilience with a lowered risk of delays. Our aim is to become a considerable player in the air freight industry so we can offer you extended global routes and capacity to help you seize and optimise all relevant sector opportunities. We believe that the strong pre-existing products in both companies will complement each other well and truly benefit you and your future business growth.

We strongly believe in working closely with our customers and as such, your pressure points are our pressure points. Our offering will allow customers to choose different service levels with varying speed depending on their needs, whether time, cost or control is the deciding factor. It is our goal to help you manage your supply chain to the best of your ability, and in turn better meet the needs of your end-consumers.

Please also see below where you will find a more detailed Q&A prepared by our teams.

FAQs