The German container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd will buy the port and logistics activities of the group Chilean SAAM, which will focus its attention on the core business of towing services. Today the two sides have signed a binding agreement under which the company Hamburg to acquire the entire capital of SAAM Ports and SAAM Logistics, the two subsidiaries of the South American group operating respectively in the two business segments. The two companies they will change hands for a billion dollars, a figure that includes the ownership of real estate of logistics activities of SAAM, which expects to derive from the sale a net profit of 400 million dollars.

SAAM Ports operates ten terminals and port facilities in the Chilean ports of Iquique (terminal Iquique Terminal International), Antofagasta (Antofagasta Terminal Internacional), San Antonio ( San Antonio Terminal International) and San Vincente (San Vincente Terminal International) as well as the national river port of call of Puerto Corral (Portuaria Corral) specialized in handling of forest products, in the US port of Port Everglades (Florida International Terminal), in the Mexican port of Mazatlán and in the Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil (Portuario Terminal Guayaquil) and operates the Colombian port of Buenavista (Puerto Buenavista) and the Costa Rican one of Puerto Caldera. SAAM Ports has about 4 thousand employees and in 2021 its terminals have enlivened a traffic of containers equal to 3.5 million teu. SAAM Logistics has about 300 employees and the activities of the company are related to those of the five Chilean port terminals of the group.

In addition to those of towing services, also the activities logistics for airborne goods carried out by SAAM are not object of the agreement. They are two business segments that together represent approximately 55% of the group's EBITDA.

"This agreement - said the director general of the SAAM Macario Valdés - will allow us to continue to strengthen the tugboat business, where SAAM is already the third global player thanks to the strategy we have implemented since 2019 with the acquisition of all operations joint with Boskalis, with the acquisition of Intertug, Standard Towing and Ian Taylor Peru, and with the announcement of the purchase of Starnav's assets in Brazil. In addition, to strengthen our strategy in the logistics of air freight transport - ha remembered Valdés - we acquired 50% of Aerosan from American Airlines."

The acquisition agreed with SAAM is part of the strategy of vertical integration pursued in recent years by Hapag-Lloyd as from other leading world maritime carriers and that brought in recent days the German group to make an agreement to acquire 49% of the capital of the Italian Spinelli group ( of 15 September 2022) and, previously, to ally with companies Eurogate and Contship Italia of the German group Eurokai to realize a new container terminal in the Egyptian port of Damietta ( of 10 May 2022) and to acquire 30% of the capital of Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven (CTW) of the German port of Wilhelmshaven ( of 28 September 2021). New terminal activities that add to those already operated by Hapag-Lloyd through the shareholdings in the terminalista company Container Terminal Altenwerder of the port of Hamburg and in the Tanger Alliance, company operating the TC3 container terminal of the Moroccan port of Tanger Med.