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A high demand for container transport and cheap fuel brought the Hamburg shipping company Hapag-Lloyd a strong profit jump in the Corona year 2020.

Because the company also significantly reduced its costs, earnings before interest and taxes (Ebit) rose year-on-year according to preliminary figures by around 500 million euros to around 1.3 billion euros, as Hapag-Lloyd announced in Hamburg on Wednesday.

The result was thus in the middle of the target range, which was only increased again at the beginning of December.

As CEO Rolf Habben Jansen reported a few weeks ago, the ships were barely enough in autumn to transport the huge amounts of goods to their customers.

According to the preliminary figures, the transport volume for the year as a whole fell by 1.6 percent to 11.8 million standard containers.

But increased transport prices drove sales up by three percent to 12.8 billion euros.

As a result, and because of the savings in operation and fuel, Hapag-Lloyd was also able to compensate for special charges in the fourth quarter, which, according to the information, were primarily due to an optimization of the freighter fleet.

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In view of the good prospects, in December Hapag-Lloyd announced the order for six freighters in what is currently the largest category, each with around 23,500 container units (TEU) capacity, at a total price of the equivalent of 820 million euros.

Germany's leading liner shipping company did not provide any information on net profit on Wednesday.

It is especially important for dividend payments.

The two largest shareholders, each with 30 percent, are the entrepreneur Klaus-Michael Kühne and the Chilean shipping company CSAV of the Luksic family.

The city of Hamburg has a 13.9 percent stake in Hapag-Lloyd, the Qatar state fund with 12.3 percent and that from Saudi Arabia with 10.2 percent.

Around 3.6 percent of the shares are in free float.