The chaos in the supply chains can now be felt in many ways: ordered goods arrive late or not at all, transport costs reach record highs and drive up prices.

It is difficult to predict when everything will settle down again, but there is an important voice of confidence: Rolf Habben Jansen, head of Hapag-Lloyd AG, the fifth largest shipping company in the world, expects the situation to improve before the end of this year.

With the end of the Omicron wave, more staff will be available everywhere and the traffic jams in front of and in the ports will disappear, so the calculation.

"In the next three months improvement is in sight, but it will take maybe six to eight months before we have a situation like before Corona," said Habben Jansen in a video conference with journalists.

Susanne Preuss

Business correspondent in Hamburg.

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In any case, Hapag-Lloyd has not made any progress during the pandemic with the aim of becoming the number one in terms of quality - on the contrary, dissatisfaction with chaos and high prices is growing among the customers of the shipping companies.

The Hapag-Lloyd Reederei chart indicates that the level of reliability towards customers is well below 30 percent, or to put it another way: only a quarter of the transports arrive on time.

At the same time, customers have to dig deep into their pockets.

If you want to ship goods at short notice on the route between China and Europe, you have to pay five times as much today as before the pandemic.

Habben Jansen rejects the widespread speculation that the shipowners want to keep the level artificially high and are therefore intentionally keeping the capacity tight: "Every ship is sailing," he says: All ships are on their way, idle at a historic low .

What to do with the huge prize?

While the operational situation is still extremely tense, Habben Jansen has a luxury problem to solve: what to do with the huge profit that was washed into his coffers in these strange times?

According to preliminary figures, the shipping company posted 9.4 billion euros in EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) for the past year – with sales of 22.3 billion euros.

This results in a return on sales of 42 percent.

If you factor out the depreciation, the result (Ebitda) is 10.9 billion euros - and thus an operating margin of 48 percent.

Sales increased by 74 percent compared to the previous year - although this in no way correlates with increased goods handling.

Due to the strained supply chains, the transport volumes were almost the same as in the previous year at 11.9 million containers (TEU) after 11.8 million previously.

It was not long ago that the group was in crisis.

After a difficult decade for all shipowners, Hapag-Lloyd earned its cost of capital again for the first time in 2020.

The result in this first Corona year rose to a record value of 1.3 billion euros (EBIT), and yet that was not even a seventh of what is left this year.

In any case, there is now enough in the till for extensive investments.

Hapag-Lloyd has ordered 625,000 additional containers alone in order to react to the bottlenecks.

In addition, 22 ships were ordered.

Ten of them have a transport capacity of 13,000 standard containers, the remaining twelve are among the largest container ships in the world, with a length of around 400 meters and loading capacity for 23,500 containers.

Part of it should be delivered this year, the other part next year, according to Habben Jansen's expectations.

The risks of normalization

Further investments are planned in ports, said the Hapag-Lloyd boss, without going into detail.

He was rather cautious about possible acquisitions: "Many prices are ridiculous." Buying expensive does not pay off in the long term.

Habben Jansen expressly rejects Hapag-Lloyd's entry into the air freight business.

"We don't see operating an airline as a logical extension of what we do," he said, referring to the planned entry of the world's largest shipping company MSC into the Italian state line ITA.

The beneficiaries of the record year include the shareholders, who can presumably even expect a double-digit dividend.

Last year - also with a record profit - Hapag-Lloyd distributed EUR 3.50 per share, for 2019 there was EUR 1.10 and a year earlier it was a meager 15 cents.

However, the strong price increase that occurred during the special boom is likely to be much more relevant for the shareholders: the price rose from less than 50 euros in autumn 2020 to a record high of 280 euros at the beginning of this year.

However, there are certainly analysts who recommend selling the share and warn of the risks of normalization.

Habben Jansen is also aware of the problem.

"Be profitable" is the first heading of Strategy 2023, which the Hapag-Lloyd boss outlined in the journalists' meeting - and it says explicitly: "We have to be vigilant".

In other words, when the pressure on the supply chains eases, freight rates drop and capacities increase at the same time, things get tricky.

And another point will require the increased attention of the shipping company boss: sustainability.

"We need to do more, and hopefully quickly," he said.

So far, Hapag-Lloyd plans to have reduced CO2 emissions by 30 percent by 2030 and to be able to operate a CO2-free fleet with alternative drives in 2045.

In addition, emissions of sulfur and nitrogen are to be significantly reduced.