STENA LOGISTICS

Stena Logistics, Stena’s new business area, was launched a few months ago. The goal is to be able to offer solutions throughout the freight chain to European customers with rolling goods. This entails both capabilities to attract more cargo to Stena Line’s routes and creating new business opportunities for the future. 

“To ensure that our ferry lines remain profitable in the future, it can be important to have a broader range of solutions for our freight customers,” says Carl-Johan Hagman, CEO, Stena Rederi AB. “Stena Line and Stena RoRo have also made major investments in the form of nine so-called E-Flexer ferries.  We are very pleased with the new vessels and they will make up the core of Stena Line for many decades to come.  But large new investments also mean major commitments and it is now even more important that we remain relevant and profitable in a future that is both changing and uncertain. Our competitors order many and large vessels. It is undoubtedly the case that the transport and logistics market in Europe is consolidating and becoming more integrated. Cargo owners are placing even higher demands on transparency and optimization of their transport chains. This is opening up new business opportunities and we’re taking advantage of them.”

Plans to enter the logistics sector have been around for a long time. But it was a meeting with Korean Hyundai Glovis in Seoul that turned out to be the real starting shot. A few years ago, Stena Bulk was able to provide the ice-classified P-Maxen Stena Polaris on short notice for transport through the Northeast Passage when Hyundai Glovis needed help. 

“Some time later, Hans Nilsson (current head of Stena Glovis) and I returned and met with Hyundai Glovis in South Korea,” says Carl-Johan Hagman. “They thanked us for the help and asked if we could work together in other ways. And thanks to the relationship initiated by Stena Bulk, we were able to do this.”

The result has been a joint venture – Stena Glovis, – based in Hamburg. The company’s goal is to offer integrated solutions for transoceanic shipping, short sea shipping and inland cargoes for both Hyundai’s own vehicles and other rolling loads on the way in or out of Europe, as well as within Europe.

“Hyundai is the world’s third-largest car manufacturer with a production capacity of 8.5 million cars per year, and the transport and logistics company Hyundai Glovis has 100 car transport vessels for intercontinental transport of RoRo cargo and cars,” says Carl-Johan Hagman. “Stena Glovis now offers 12 departures a month from Europe to Asia, the Middle East, West Africa and the USA.  Next year we expect 15 departures.”

In addition to Stena Glovis, the new logistics initiative also includes the purchase of two established freight forwarding and logistics companies, Swedish NTEX and Dutch NMT, as well as an investment in analytical platforms that create transparency and optimization opportunities. 

“We’ve invested in the Hong Kong-based company Gravity, which develops platform-based, door-to-door solutions, and we also have several of our own projects underway within the framework for Stena Group IT’s SIS department (Stena Intelligence Systems),” Carl-Johan Hagman explains. “The aim is to be able to develop products for our own companies and for commercialization, such as the optimization tool Orbit, developed by Stena Bulk.”

All these parts, Stena Glovis, NTEX, NMT, Gravity and investments in new platforms, together constitute Stena Logistics, which will serve both as support for own operations and as a separate source of revenue.

“The ambition is that in 5-10 years, in addition to Stena Bulk and Stena Line, we will also have the company Stena Logistics, which will generate revenues that are not dependent on capital investments in steel, but rather in people and soft logistics services that create a good balance in our shipping portfolio,” says Carl-Johan Hagman.