CANBERRA: Container shipping company, Maersk, is reportedly looking to expand into on-land logistics operations in Australia, while also adding other services to its port calls as it battles low freight rates and financial losses. “We’ve got a vision to be the global integrator of container logistics,” Gerard Morrison, Maersk Managing Director – Oceania, recently told The Australian Financial Review (AFR).
“Shipping and logistics can be quite fragmented – multiple parties, multiple documents, multiple invoices – but we’re hoping to find ways to simplify that. “At the moment, shipping is ‘shipping from port to port’ and the thought is, how can we help our customers deal with other parts of the supply chain?”
According to Morrison, in order to offer services such as container storage, customs clearance and trucking to the logistics sector in Australia, Maersk may need to acquire other businesses – though there are no such plans in place at present. “If the right opportunity was there, we wouldn’t look away from it,” he told AFR. Morrison added that shipping volumes are improving worldwide, driven in part by the economies of Europe and Latin America. “Australia and New Zealand are doing very well, there’s very steady growth out of both markets…customers are asking us to carry more and more cargo.”
