Danish shipping behemoth Maersk Line is merging its two largest Asian operations into one Asia-Pacific head office, cutting down the number of its regional offices from eight to seven in order to lower operational costs in a troubled industry.
The company said it is moving its regional headquarters from Singapore to Hong Kong, and converting the Singapore unit into a country cluster office that will oversee Southeast Asian operations, while Hong Kong becomes the Asia-Pacific headquarters.
Previously, Maersk Line had an Asia Pacific (Southeast Asia and Oceania) regional office and a North Asia (China, South Korea, and Japan) regional office in the region.
“Combining the two regions will enable simpler and more standardised processes. This will allow us to create a leaner organisation to operate with greater transparency and alignment on a regional, as well as cluster (sub-regional) level,” said a Maersk Line official in a statement.
The move will lead to more jobs based in Singapore as a bigger management team is being set up to head the Southeast Asia cluster, added the spokesman. The management team in Hong Kong will remain and oversee a larger geography moving forward.
Bo Wegener, previously the country manager for Thailand and Myanmar, has taken charge of the Southeast Asia cluster from January 1.
Maersk Line in November 2015 said it was going to take drastic and immediate steps to reduce capacity, improve efficiency, trim staff, and cut operational costs, including halting new investments in more ships as market conditions continued to be unfavorable.
“In light of the lower demand these initiatives will allow Maersk Line to deliver on the ambition to grow at least in line with the market to defend the market leading position,” it had said.
“We are on a journey to transform Maersk Line. We will make the organisation leaner and simpler. We want to improve our customer experience digitally and at the same time work as efficiently as possible,” Maersk Line CEO Soren Skou had stated.
He added that Maersk Line will also be trimming its global staff by the thousands over the next two years.
“Today, Maersk Line has 23,000 land based staff globally. The organisational transformation and on-going automation and digitalisation will enable Maersk Line to reduce the global organisation by at least 4,000 positions by the end of 2017 with the aim of minimizing redundancies through managing natural attrition,” said the company.
“We are fewer people today than a year ago. We will be fewer next year and the following year. These decisions are not taken lightly, but they are necessary steps to transform our industry,” said Skou.
Photo: WiNG
