Hapag-Lloyd: Two Fleets Lost in World Wars and the Gemini Pact With Maersk

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Hapag-Lloyd grew from two bitter German rivals: HAPAG, the Hamburg-America Line founded in Hamburg in 1847, and Norddeutscher Lloyd, founded in Bremen in 1857. HAPAG went for scale and luxury, starting the Imperator, Vaterland and Bismarck in 1912, the first liners above 50,000 gross register tons, a measure of enclosed volume rather than weight. NDL chased volume and speed, carrying about 218,000 passengers across the Atlantic in 1913, running a base in Hoboken, New Jersey, and winning the Blue Riband with the Bremen in 1929. World War I erased both fleets: the U.S. confiscated 32 interned NDL ships and the Hoboken base in 1917, and most of HAPAG's 175 ships went to the Allies, with the Bismarck sailing for White Star as the Majestic. They rebuilt, and World War II wiped them out again; the Bremen dashed to Murmansk in 1939 and burned in 1941.

After buying secondhand ships in the 1950s, the two faced containerization, which demanded new cellular ships and gantry cranes. They formed a joint container line in 1967 and fully merged on September 1, 1970. Tourism group TUI AG acquired Hapag-Lloyd in 1998, alongside a cruise arm and the Hapag-Lloyd Flug charter airline, then began selling its stake around 2009. Hapag-Lloyd then bought CP Ships for $2 billion in 2005, CSAV's container business in 2014, United Arab Shipping Company in 2017, NileDutch in 2021 and DAL in 2022, and announced a $4.2 billion deal for Zim in early 2026. In 2025 it moved 13.4 million TEU with about 301 ships and earned $21.05 billion in revenue.

• NDL's Elbe set an eight-day Southampton to New York record in 1881.
• Its terminals, grouped as Hanseatic Global Terminals, include stakes in Spinelli in Italy and JM Baxi in India and the Florida International Terminal at Port Everglades.
• The Gemini Cooperation with Maersk launched in February 2025 with about 340 ships, Maersk supplying 60 percent of capacity.
• Kühne Holding and CSAV each own 30 percent, the city of Hamburg 13.9, Qatar Holding 12.3 and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund 10.2.
• In 2014 the Colombo Express took a 65-foot dent in a collision with the Maersk Tanjong near the Suez Canal.