News / Hapag also eyes Zim's Gold Star Line as job loss fears rise

Hapag-Lloyd’s acquisition of Zim would also see the German carrier take over another operator, Zim-owned Gold Star Line (GSL), but precisely how it factors-in to any long-term planning remains to be seen.

Based in Hong Kong, GSL is a regional intra-Asia subsidiary of the Israeli carrier, with a fleet of 23 vessels and a combined capacity of 85,000 teu, spread across ships ranging from 1,700 teu to 7,800 teu in size.

Asked about the inclusion of GSL in the deal announced by Hapag-Lloyd and Zim on Monday, the German operator’s CEO, Rolf Habben Jansen, offered scant detail.

He said: “It is too early to look at how we’re going to do that. We would, of course, do proper planning for what needs to be done post-closing, and we will try to keep everything that is great and we can build on; this could certainly be an element.”

GSL is primarily run on chartered tonnage, the bulk of its trade running between East Asia and India, East Africa, South Africa, and west Africa, as well as shuttle services linking China to Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

According to Alphaliner, GSL recently added a South Korea-China-Indonesia service, marketed as KCI, jointly operated with Interasia Lines, TS Lines, and Namsung Shipping.

Given Hapag-Lloyd’s intra-Asia network, the inclusion of GSL in the deal would make sense, as it may offer an alternative to the German line’s reliance on slot allocations across a number of loops from third-party carriers, including its Gemini partner, Maersk.

And in further development of Hapag-Lloyd’s efforts to acquire the Israeli line, Reuters is reporting that Zim has been unable to assuage landside workers’ concerns that the deal would lead to job losses – 80% of the 1,000-strong workforce have downed tools.

Union leader Ziva Lainer-Schkolnik told the news agency: “We’re not allowing any activity. We’ve stopped vessels at Ashdod and Haifa and will not let the company work on those ships until they talk with us; and we’re convinced they’re considering the employees.”

She said the union’s concern surrounded the development of ‘New Zim’, a carrier to be formed after the merger, operated by Israeli financial firm FIMI Opportunity Funds, to run services “deemed of strategic national interest to Israel”.

Ms Lainer-Schkolnik said the union had been informed by management that this would see the 1,000 workers at Zim’s landside operations in Israel slashed to just 120, despite many holding tenured contracts.

While Zim declined to respond to questions from Reuters, the topic did arise during Monday’s press briefing, attended by The Loadstar, when Mr Habben Jansen noted that “if you fast-forward four to five years, then we will most likely have fewer people than we have today”.

However, he added: “If I look at back at the experience we have had with previous mergers, we have always been able to deal with that in a good way; take CSV in 2014, I believe they had about 300 people. We’re still very close to that.

“When we acquired USC in 2017, we occupied about 10 floors. We’re still there on eight floors. So, that gives you a bit of a flavour of how we try to deal with those type of things, and hopefully we can also do that this time.”