Maersk integrates Damco supply chain and ocean businesses

Danish shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk will bring together its Damco Supply Chain Services and Maersk Line’s Ocean Product from January 1 next year.
The two entities will be integrated and their respective value-added services will combined and sold as Maersk products and services. Damco handled a total of 190,000 tons of airfreight in 2016.
Damco’s freight forwarding business, which handles airfreight or multi-carrier options in ocean freight, will continue to be run as a separate and independent business under the Damco brand.
AP Moller-Maersk said that the move will enable the company to “better serve customers and unlock growth potential” in the logistics segment and will offer “more comprehensive end-to-end logistic solutions for cargo owners”.
In a statement the company added: “This is the next step in the Maersk journey to become a global, integrated container transport and logistics company”.
The integrated commercial organisation will operate with one management team, one sales force, a new product organisation and one customer experience organisation.
It will be headed by Vincent Clerc, Maersk’s chief commercial officer. Klaus Rud Sejling, Damco’s chief executive, will take on a new position as head of Maersk’s Logistics and Services Products operation, reporting to Clerc.
Søren Skou, AP Moller-Maersk’s chief executive, announced: “Today we are taking further steps in the transformation of our business on a structural level and how we go to market, enabling us to offer more solutions to our customers in a simpler way.
“Our employees play a key role in making this happen and therefore we are at the same time empowering our frontline organisation [which] is closest to our customers.”
By allowing Damco to focus fully on freight forwarding, AP Moller-Maersk said that it aims to sustain a “well performing and global freight forwarding business that can grow and prosper”.
Saskia Groen In’t Woud, currently chief operating officer at Damco, will become chief executive of Damco Freight Forwarding.
"This integration marks a big milestone on Maersk’s current growth journey towards operating as one integrated company,” Skou said.
“We are in a strong position to deliver solutions that meet our customers’ end-to-end supply chain management needs, thereby tapping into markets covering the whole journey from producer to consumer by building on our business strengths.”