Third Largest Global Container Shipping Line Getting its House in Order

FRANCE – WORLDWIDE – The CMA CGM Group, third largest container shipping line in the world, has announced the merger of two of its subsidiaries; MacAndrews and OPDR, effective January 1st, 2018, a move which will see the Oldenburg-Portugiesische Dampfschiffs-Rhederei name disappear after 135 years. CMA CGM also separately announced the sale of its majority stake in a Californian container terminal to an infrastructure equity company.

With the headquarters to be located in Hamburg, the union between the MacAndrews and OPDR, both specialising in intra-European transport, will combine under the name MacAndrews and should, according to the French shipping giant, enable the Group to strengthen its multimodal offering in Europe. The OPDR group owns five other subsidiaries based in the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Morocco and the UK.

Acquired by CMA CGM in 2002, MacAndrews offers its clients rail, land, and maritime transport services and is a specialist in container transport on short-sea routes as well as multimodal solutions in Europe. MacAndrews connects Great Britain, the Iberian Peninsula and Poland. OPDR, first acquired by the CMA CGM Group in 2015, is an expert in intra-European short-sea transport and logistics via its subsidiary companies.

In the US, CMA CGM has sold a 90% equity interest in Global Gateway South Terminal (GSS) in Los Angeles, to Sweden based EQT Infrastructure III and its US partner P5 Infrastructure, for an ‘Enterprise Value’ of $875 million. CMA CGM will remain a minority shareholder with 10% of the GGS terminal and says it will continue to be a major user of the facility.

Global Gateway South has an annual capacity of 2.4 million TEU, and was originally owned by Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) / American President Lines (APL) and was historically operated as a cost centre. In 2016, CMA acquired NOL / APL to strengthen its position on the Transpacific trade route.

Photo: The new logo revealed by CMA CGM earlier this year.