Maersk, Hamburg Sud and SeaLand – what’s in a name?

Maersk, Hamburg Sud and SeaLand – what’s in a name?
Marcus Hand | Jan 30, 2023 https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/containers/maersk-hamburg-sud-and-seal...

Maersk had a busy few days last week announcing the end of the 2M alliance with rival MSC and plans to consolidate branding under the Danish parent’s name and dropping longstanding brands including Hamburg Sud and SeaLand.

The news of the branding change came out via a customer advisory headed – A Unified Maersk Brand. With this unified brand the historic brands of Hamburg Sud, acquired in 2017, and SeaLand, a name was resurrected not so many years ago, will disappear.

When it comes to mergers and acquisitions brand value and how much a name is really worth is one of those great intangibles.

Now, one might argue that for B2B entities such as shipping lines rather than consumer products brands are relatively unimportant. Certainly, corporate brands do not command the fanatical loyalty, and additional pricing potential, of say a name like Apple and the iconic iPhone. However, they clearly are seen as a value as company’s spend large amounts of money conceptualising and marketing their brand – if they didn’t matter a small grey logo stating the purpose of the company would surely suffice?

Now Maersk could well argue that they are the best-known name in shipping and it is one of, if not the only, shipping company as distinct from logistics provider, that people from outside the industry have heard of, so unifying the names into the Maersk brand makes sense. While a rebranding exercise does entail cost over the longer term there would also be savings to be made in running a single unified brand.

However, more niche brands such as Hamburg Sud do inspire a loyalty in customers to certain geographies and trade lanes. Meanwhile Maersk actually resurrected the SeaLand name, associated with the very early days of containerisation, in 2014 for its regional and feeder services, something that was presumably done as a value was seen in the brand.

The personal business that shipping is also sees a loyalty to the people who work for particular brands, another key factor to be consider in any integration.

The customer advisory from Maersk hinted at much wider restructuring than just the brand name on the individual lines of business. “We believe that by integrating these into the Maersk brand, we will be able to ease your logistical difficulties, whilst also offering you more variety, ease, and connectivity than ever before, all under one roof,” it said. It remains to be seen what this means in practice what this means to the customer and also those who work for these brands.

Not all non-Maersk brands will be disappearing though with the likes of APM Terminals and Svitzer remaining as they are. As service providers to the wider maritime industry branding these as Maersk can give third party customers the perception that they will play second fiddle to Maersk itself as an inhouse customer.