A day at Maersk

Let’s get to know Maersk first.

What is Maersk and what is Maersk doing?

Maersk Line is part of the Maersk group, a collection of shipping and energy companies.  With his 630 vessels it is the largest container shipping company in the world and was founded in 1928. Maersk covers ports in almost all over the world – 343 ports in 121 countries – with a market share of about 17%.

It all seems that Maersk is a very traditional company; it’s operating in a traditional business and has a quite long history.

But A.P. Moeller, the founder of Maersk, realized that “constant care can prevent losses”.  The concept of constant care was renewed in all the years but it states that Maersk is openminded to innovation, changes in business environment or even ethical questions as in this example from the firm’s website: “For us, innovation is a highly focused discipline that aims to deliver better service, protect our employees and the environment, create new business opportunities and ensure cost-effectiveness.”

On one hand we expect the business in Asia to be different to business in Europe. On the other hand, Hong Kong is quite western, so maybe business there isn’t very much different or unusual?

We hope to get to know about the work atmosphere, business culture or even hierarchy aspects. We’d like to see how Maersk tries to renew container shipping to make it more energy efficient and in the end decrease the impact of container shipping on the environment.

At least, we would like to discuss the impact of the container crisis on Maersk Line and how they deal with the low transport prices to do not end up like Hanjin.

Robin