Meet Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen online - discussing your questions and current challenges – LIVE

I hope you and your teams are doing well in these challenging times – and together with you I hope that the economies around the globe will start to recover in the upcoming weeks and months.

It is already since almost ten weeks that the vast majority of our employees is working from home. Our priorities remain unchanged – preserving the health and safety of our staff and at the same time responding swiftly to your needs and demands. Our operations are stable and the feedback from most of you has been very encouraging for us, and please don´t hesitate to reach out and contact our teams if things don't go right.

Over the past weeks we have taken many measures to respond to the crisis and we have in a large number of services adjusted our network. You can find a daily updated list of all blank sailings by clicking here.

Please also continue to use our easy-to-use business solutions, such as our online quoting and booking system Quick Quotes and the Hapag-Lloyd Navigator Dashboard – which can also be used from home and allows you to easily interact with us. We recently also introduced a solution which allows you to book additional services like for example a Shipping Guarantee.

End of April I took the chance to personally talk to roughly 300 of our worldwide customers in live video chats. The sessions provided me a very good insight in your current challenges – and I am happy to invite you to the next live sessions on June 2nd at 9.00 am CEST and June 3rd at 7.00 pm CEST*. Please register here and advise which date suits you best– we will then send you a link with the dial-in link details within the next days.

As you may have read in the media, last Friday we have published our results of the first quarter 2020. We had a decent start into the year 2020 despite the coronavirus pandemic. Our transport volumes and freight rates improved but our earnings were impacted by higher bunker prices and negative valuation effects. We expect the effects of the coronavirus pandemic to become more visible in the second quarter and have taken various additional measures to ensure that even if the crisis lasts significantly longer than anticipated we will manage to get out of the crisis strong. Unfortunately the uncertainties will remain, for us, for you and the entire industry, but for sure: together as business partners we will weather the storm.

On behalf of 13,000 Hapag-Lloyd employees worldwide I wish you, your families and friends and all your colleagues and/or employees all the best and lots of strength for the challenges ahead. I thank you very much for your continuous support and your trust in our company and I am looking forward to deepen our business relationship in the future.

Kind regards from Hamburg

Rolf Habben Jansen

*Please note that places are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis.