HL opting out of the Arctic route too
After the French shipping company CMA CGM’s recent announcement that it would not sail the Northwest Passage for environmental reasons, the issue is once again being hotly debated in the container shipping industry.
Jörg Erdmann, senior director sustainability at Hapag-Lloyd: “All things considered, the desirability of using these passages must be very carefully weighed from both the ecological and economic perspectives.”
Hapag-Lloyd does not use the Northwest Passage or the Northeast Passage as shipping routes right now, nor are there any plans to do so in the future. As long as there are no guarantees that these passages can be navigated without negatively impacting the environment, using them is out of the question for Hapag-Lloyd as well. (fd)