With the acquisition of Morocco’s Comanav, CMA CGM was not just buying one of those small to medium-sized shipping companies which it says offer interesting prospects to bigger operators like itself at the moment.
The number three container shipping group was also buying a terminal operator that possesses, notably, a 20 per cent stake in the number two container terminal of the new Mediterranean port of Tangiers Med, which will come on stream in June 2008.
The terminal, in which CMA CGM already has a 20 per cent stake, is of major strategic interest to the group, which is already looking forward to the second phase of development of the new port, Tangiers Med 2, which will take container-handling capacity to close to nine million TEUs by 2020.
CMA CGM chairman Jacques Saadé indicated recently that the group was looking to Tangiers Med to serve as a major Mediterranean transhipment hub, superseding to some extent its existing hub in Malta.
“Ships are becoming bigger and bigger,” he said, “and will no longer be unloaded in Malta but in Tangiers, which is becoming vital.”
There is no reason, however, for thinking that the acquisition of Comanav, which follows that of French African line specialist Delmas at the start of 2006 and Taiwan’s Cheng Lie Navigation in March this year, has sated CMA CGM’s appetite.
Saadé said the group was looking for smaller companies to acquire and specifically mentioned North Africa as one of its principal hunting grounds.
“I believe that acquisitions of small and medium-sized companies are particularly interesting to carry out because the big companies can develop them much better than they can develop themselves,” he said.
He singled out Algeria, where the group already has a leading position, for particular mention, without indicating what its targets were.
Having detailed the group’s existing terminal network, which takes in 15 ports in Europe (France, Belgium and Malta), the United States (Mobil), the Caribbean and French Guiana (Fort de France, Pointe à Pitre and Degrad des Cannes), the Middle East (Um Qsar) and China (Chiwan), Saade assured that other terminal investments were planned.