Making a tough decision

In 2013 APM Terminals for the first time decided to relinquish an inland facility due to poor safety performance, despite significant efforts which had been made to bring the facility to an acceptable safety standard. The facility in Vietnam has 280 employees and is providing services such as container repair, maintenance and warehousing. They encountered two fatal incidents in less than a year, and the investigations revealed that in spite of significant investments in safety training, new equipment and management support, they still failed to meet the APM Terminals’ minimum safety standard.

After careful consideration, APM Terminals’ management decided to sell the facility; a key factor in this decision was the realisation that the efforts required to bring the facility into line with APM Terminals’ safety principles and standards would be too great and that effort was better spent on other facilities and operations. Even though the local team had made good progress, APM Terminals was not convinced that the business could operate efficiently and without significant risk of experiencing further serious injuries or fatalities. It was a tough decision.

Maersk Line and Maersk Tankers are active members of the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN), a global business network working for a maritime industry free of all types of corruption. MACN supports a pilot project in Nigeria together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The aim is to identify and address vulnerable elements in vessel port call processes where corruption is prone to take place. 

In 2013, 70 Nigerian assessors started interviewing public officials working in the port to get a full and frank description of the practices and processes. 

Through collaboration with the local authorities, an environment was created in which the local officials could feel comfortable talking about their processes without fear of repercussions. The input provided was turned into an action plan launched in Nigeria by the end of 2013 including actions such as integrity training, reducing manual handling and establishing a formalised complaint mechanism.

Responding effectively to humanitarian disasters is complex and requires specialist knowledge and resources. With our logistics and transport expertise and equipment, the Maersk Group is able to play a significant role, helping communities recover from humanitarian crises. 

The efficient deployment of logistics expertise in the first phase of an emergency can be crucial in providing medicine, food and shelter to minimise human suffering. The long-term effects of a disaster also present challenges for the local business and economic rehabilitation of the affected society. In both cases, we can play an important role.

The Maersk Group has participated in and supported relief efforts in several of the regions where we operate. We have adopted a systematic approach for our engagement by participating in the Logistics Emergency Teams (LET) to ensure we respond appropriately to different scales of emergencies.