The chief executive officer of Hapag-Lloyd Rolf Habben Jansen has urged shipping companies to work together to achieve green targets.
Even though he did not directly refer to it, his statements on Wednesday come one day after Moller-Maersk and CMA CGM unveiled a wide-ranging cooperation on maritime decarbonisation between them.
Having said that, Hapag-Lloyd is already teaming up with other companies on greener shipping as a strategic partner of the Singapore-based Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD).
“This [decarbonisation] is such a daunting challenge that we have ahead of us that it is really important that we try to do it together,” Habben Jansen said in a speech in Brussels.
“I do not believe that in shipping one can win from competition by being greener than someone else,” he told a crowd of about 300 luminaries at the European Shipping Summit — an event organised by the European shipowners’ lobby ECSA.
“It’s all about technology and about scale… and we can only do that if we truly work together,” he said, adding: “There are many collaborations around the industry and I hope that they will be successful and that there will be more going forward”.
AP Moller-Maersk and CMA CGM announced on 19 September that they will work together to develop alternative greener fuels for container vessel propulsion.
In a different part of his speech, Habben Jansen expressed some scepticism about the precise dates that container liner companies, including his own, have set themselves to achieve net-zero emissions.
“Some said 2040, we have said 2045, others said 2050… to be honest, in the end, I don’t think it really matters — we just need to go as fast as we can”.
