Maersk Europe Business Continuity Plan for COVID-19

In light of the current challenging situation caused by the outbreak of COVID-19 in many parts of the world, and particularly in Europe, we would like to provide you with an overall update of the specific measures we have taken in the Europe Region with regard to the Business Continuity Plan to ensure that our operations – and therefore your business – remain as undisrupted as possible.

In the current environment of uncertainty, we at Maersk are doing our utmost to care for your supply chain and serve you and your business as planned. Short- and long-term disruptions are a part of modern business and we have helped our customers navigate through unique supply chain challenges before. Our aim is to serve your supply chain needs with end-to-end solutions and that commitment is even stronger under current circumstances. You can continue to rely on our global reach, complemented with local expertise and knowledge in local markets.

We have also learnt from past IT challenges and have taken steps toward an industry-leading stability and flexibility of our IT platform, which is of crucial importance now where business continuity relies on new – often remote – ways of working and conducting business interactions. We have made sure to incorporate the great learnings from our teams in Asia, who were faced with this situation weeks earlier and we are convinced that our strong IT backbone, coupled with customer centricity, resilience and engagement of our teams, make us well-positioned to navigate through current challenges.

As many countries in Europe are implementing rigorous measures to limit the spreading of COVID-19, businesses must rely on solutions allowing undisrupted transactions and continuity of supply chains. We are therefore pleased to share with you more on the solutions we are implementing across Europe.

Staff accessibility
At the moment, most of our staff in Europe and our shared service centres are working from home, in compliance with the preventive measures imposed by a growing number of countries. We are ensuring that this has the least possible impact on our accessibility and your contact points at Maersk remain at your disposal by phone or email. All the staff who work remotely have full access to all Maersk systems and tools and are able to attend you in the usual way.

Bookings and equipment confirmation
There is no impact to the way you place your bookings with us and receive booking confirmations. Similarly, there is no change to the way we confirm the availability of equipment for your placed bookings.

Equipment availability
Our extensive and unmatched global equipment pool gives us the flexibility to source the necessary equipment from surplus locations and therefore secure the needed equipment to serve the needs of our customers and their specific bookings. We are continuously monitoring the equipment situation to take all necessary actions which might be required in the future.

Vessel operations
Our vessels are sailing normally, which means all our services are operating on their usual routes. We are continuously making commercial decisions in order to adjust capacity to market demand. Our fleet allows us the flexibility to quickly react to fluctuations of cargo flows to best meet customer demands.

Ports and terminals
All the container terminals we work with have extensive business continuity plans in place, allowing them to run operations despite circumstances. We keep monitoring their preparedness to ensure that our vessels will be operated on efficiently and safely, taking into consideration all the precautionary measures.

Vessel crews
We are only doing crew changes and shore leave in low risk ports. We are observing strict precautionary measures on board - and with visitors to ships. We’re complying with the guidelines of local authorities in each country. Our seafarer capacity is sufficient.

Warehousing & Distribution
We’re observing precautionary measures in our warehouses, in full compliance with local requirements in specific countries. Our facilities are operating normally considering the circumstances, and we are doing our utmost to offer you sufficient capacity to meet your needs for professional and reliable warehousing and distribution services.

Intermodal services
Our intermodal services are operating close to normally. We continue to offer you reliable and efficient rail, trucking and barge services tailor-made for your supply chain needs – also in times of higher uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Intercontinental rail
The rail services we offer between Asia and Europe remain a safe, reliable and time-efficient alternative that complements our Ocean portfolio. They continue to be fully operational, with available capacity to meet the supply chain needs of interested customers.

Throughout our operations, we take extra care to ensure the safety and comfort of our employees in full compliance with WHO recommendations and local and national regulations in specific countries. We have extended our high standards in this respect to also include our third-party operators and vendors.

Our regular COVID-19 updates are posted on Maersk to keep you informed of the specific measures taken in specific countries – please bookmark this page. We will continuously investigate new ideas on how to further improve our response to the current situation and we encourage you to engage with us on discussing you specific supply chain needs and how we can help you.

Should you have any further questions, please contact your local Maersk representative. We look forward to working you to manage your logistics and the COVID-19 business impact.