Safmarine buys Maersk Sealand agencies in SA

Exclusive by Joy Orlek
SCEPTICS THOUGHT that it would not be long before the Safmarine brand disappeared after the line was bought by AP Moller.
In fact, new developments prove the contrary.
In a further consolidation of its worldwide network, Safmarine (Pty) Ltd will purchase Maersk SA (Pty) Ltd in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
In the rest of the world the Maersk agency network will purchase the Safmarine agency network.
It's all part of the continued structural change in the organisation, streamlining 'back-room' activities that will in no way affect the customers or staff of the individual brands, Safmarine CEO Howard Boyd told FTW from Antwerp on Monday.
The prime objective of the move, which follows a recent customer survey, is to create a focused sales force. "To enable the sales team, with the support of a shared service centre, to concentrate on the customer," said Boyd.
But in terms of customer contact, there will be no change.
Peter Ehrenreich remains managing director of Maersk SA while Gail Kelly continues as managing director of Safmarine Agencies.
One of the changes in the South African context will be the relocation from Copenhagen to South Africa of Lars Jacobson and his team who are responsible for the Maersk Sealand Africa region.
The two lines will however continue to market their services separately while maintaining their own separate identities, which has been the policy since the takeover by AP Moller two and a half years ago.
"The price paid for Safmarine reflected that there was more to be bought than the assets - it was the brand, the relationships and the position that the brand had in Europe, India and Southern Africa.
"Retaining our separate identities has however not stopped us from looking at ways of combining back-room functionality," said Boyd.
"The first move in this direction was combining our containers with those of Maersk Sealand into a common pool which gave us a larger size of fleet and reduced costs.
"The latest development takes this process 10% further. "
In terms of the financial consideration of the move, Boyd pointed out that it was more of an inter-Group transaction than anything else.