The Hamburg container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd increased its profit

The Hamburg container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd increased its profit more than tenfold in the first nine months of this year. The bottom line was a consolidated result of 5.56 billion euros in the period from January to September, after 0.54 billion euros a year earlier, according to the published quarterly report. The major fuel for the profit explosion are the enormous increases in prices - in the industry jargon, freight rates - for shipments by sea, which have allowed the profits of all container shipping companies to go through the roof this year. The reason is an interplay of several factors: The corona pandemic has so mixed up the timetables of the liner shipping companies that ships and containers are often not where they should be. In addition, the early start to the economy, especially in China and the USA, has increased the demand for sea transport to such an extent that capacities are more than exhausted. Hapag-Lloyd puts the increase in the average freight rate at almost 66 percent, while the transport volume has increased by 3.3 percent compared to the same period in the previous year. With a fleet of currently 257 ships, Hapag-Lloyd is one of the most important container shipping companies in the world. Sales climbed by 60 percent to 15 billion euros in the first nine months. Because of this development, the Hamburg-based company had already raised its forecasts for the full year 2021 significantly at the end of October. Nevertheless, Hapag-Lloyd hopes that earnings will normalize soon, despite the positive exceptional situation. "Now it's actually too extreme," said shipping manager Rolf Habben Jansen at the end of September.