Maersk now flies from Denmark to China

At 2:28 p.m., the white and blue machine with the registration OY-SYA and more than 50 tons of cargo thundered down the runway and took off. Maersk Air Cargo cargo planes have been flying from Billund in Denmark to Hangzhou near Shanghai in China for the first time since Monday. The Danish shipping and logistics group AP Moeller Maersk launched the new service in the presence of the Danish Economy and Transport Ministers. This first ever direct cargo flight between Denmark and Asia is "a great day for the region around Billund and for the country as a whole," said Economy Minister Morten Bødskov.

Billund is about 130 kilometers north of the German border and is primarily known as the headquarters of the building block manufacturer Lego and as the first location of a Legoland park. Billund Airport is the second largest in Denmark after Copenhagen, and is also used by many charter and holiday airlines from Germany. With the pandemic, however, the volume of air freight in Billund also grew, to around 77,000 tons last year. For comparison: In 2022, around two million tons of air freight were handled at Germany’s largest airport, Frankfurt.

For decades, Maersk was the world's largest container liner shipping company and now ranks second behind the Italian-Swiss company MSC. For several years, the Danish group has been realigned to become an integrated logistics company. In addition to operating ships and port terminals, Maersk is significantly expanding its transport business on the road, in the air and with logistics warehouses. The aim is to be able to cover the entire transport chain for Maersk customers from within the group.

With the direct connection from Billund to Hangzhou, Maersk Air Cargo wants to use the cargo flight potential throughout Northern Europe, in Northern Germany especially in the metropolitan regions of Hamburg and Berlin and around the automotive industry between Wolfsburg and Hanover. "At the start of the new scheduled connection, we were able to win customers from the aviation industry and the consumer goods industry from the Hamburg metropolitan region, as well as from mechanical engineering and the automotive industry," said Jens-Ole Krenzien Vice President North Europe Continent Area based in Hamburg , WORLD.

Larger air freight items from the Hamburg metropolitan region are now usually dispatched via the airports in Frankfurt, Leipzig or Cologne Bonn. "Billund has the advantage of shorter feeder routes on the road for many shippers in the north," said Michel Pozas Lucic, vice president and head of the cargo flight business in the Maersk Group, WELT. “Above all, air freight in Billund is in the shortest possible time from the road to the plane and from the plane to the road. At a large airport like Frankfurt, that can take 12 to 16 hours.”

The newly founded subsidiary Maersk Air Cargo operates six used Boeing 767s that have been converted into cargo aircraft in Israel. Three of the aircraft each fly from Billund to Hangzhou, and three more fly between the USA and Asia on the transpacific service. From Billund there will initially be three and in the future up to twelve departures a week to China.

In addition to the newly procured Boeing 767, Maersk Air Cargo also has a number of charter planes that came into the group with the takeover of the Hamburg air freight forwarder Senator International last year. Maersk operates a number of other machines – via its former company Star Air, which now also belongs to Maersk Air Cargo – for the logistics groups DHL and UPS. About 70 of the employees taken over with Senator International are still working in Hamburg. In total, Maersk with its various subsidiaries, including the shipping company Hamburg Süd, which was taken over in 2017, has around 1,500 employees in the Hanseatic city.

It is unclear whether and how Maersk will succeed in establishing itself in the highly competitive air freight market. "Our intention is not to become a new air freight forwarder," said Krenzien. “For us, air freight is a very important addition to our entire transport network. First and foremost, we can now offer our customers, who we mainly have in sea transport, a wide range of additional air freight services. The new air freight base in Billund will significantly improve our international network.”