After the takeover of Zim by Hapag-Lloyd became known, employees of the shipping company extended their strike. They fear for their jobs.
It is one of the biggest deals in recent times: Hapag-Lloyd has bought all shares in the Israeli company Zim. This means that the Hamburg-based shipping company has grown by 700,000 TEU in one fell swoop. The purchase price amounts to an impressive $4.2 billion – “not low, but appropriate for a great company,” said Hapag-Lloyd’s CEO Rolf Habben-Jansen during a press conference after the contract was signed on Monday. The State of Israel still has to approve the deal.
However, the takeover is meeting with resistance from Zim employees. On Sunday, when the negotiations were announced, around 800 of the approximately 1,000 employees at the company’s headquarters in Haifa went on a warning strike. After both partners signed the contract, the workers extended the action to a full strike, which brought Zim’s operations to a standstill.
Delay at ports
According to union representatives, the loading and unloading of ships has been halted. There are delays in the ports of Ashdod and Haifa, and some cargo ships have been anchored since then without being processed.
“We will not allow work to resume on these ships until the company negotiates with us and we are convinced that it will take the interests of the workers into account,” union leader Ziva Lainer Shkolnik told the Reuters news agency. The cargo of ships already in port will not be unloaded.
According to the agreement between Hapag-Lloyd and Zim, the shipping company’s Israeli activities are to be spun off into a separate company. This will be controlled by the private equity fund FIMI and will operate under the name “New Zim”. It will operate 16 ships in order to maintain Israel’s direct maritime connections.
Zim staff fear redundancies
The employees fear a wave of redundancies as a result of the new structures. Only around 120 employees would remain in the new company, according to trade unionists. This would mean that almost 900 employees could lose their jobs. Neither the management nor the new owners have yet entered into talks, which has now escalated the strike. The union announced that the company would be “paralyzed if necessary”.
Hapag-Lloyd currently ranks 5th in the world market of liner shipping companies. According to Alphaliner data, the fleet has a capacity of around 2.4 million TEU and a market share of 7.1%. Zim is in tenth place with a capacity of approx. 700,000 TEU. The takeover secures Hapag-Lloyd’s position and further extends its lead over ONE (2.1 million TEU / 6.1% market share). The Chinese shipping company Cosco remains ahead of the Germans with 3.6 million TEU and a 10.7% market share.
Zim had stayed out of alliances during the last major alliance upheavals, but had entered into a cooperation with the world’s largest shipping company MSC in transpacific traffic. Hapag-Lloyd, on the other hand, has launched the “Gemini” alliance with the Danish shipping company Maersk.
Maersk offered 30$ per share
According to Israeli media, Maersk is also said to have been interested in Zim. The “bidding war” lasted six months and was fought between Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk and Zim’s CEO Eli Glickman. According to Zim CEO Yair Seroussi, Maersk last offered 30$ per share, while Hapag-Lloyd won the bid at 35$. Rumors about a possible takeover of Zim have been circulating since Idan Ofer, the shipping company’s largest shareholder, sold his shares in November 2024.
