Hapag Lloyd CEO: What does resilience look like when trade routes break?

When violence erupted in the Red Sea in 2023, the stakes became brutally clear: “One of our ships was actually hit. (…) so then it’s not a very difficult decision, you know, to protect your people and to have them then sail around the Cape of Good Hope.” The harder question, he explains, is: When is it safe to go back?

At the same time, shipping faces an existential transformation. “Decarbonization and investing in sustainability is something that is there to stay,” Jansen says — yet progress is slow: “The biggest hurdle is not technology (…) it’s the limited availability of green fuels.” That reality produces ideas once considered almost unthinkable: “In fifteen years or so from today, especially the larger container ships can also sail on nuclear.”

Looking ahead, he sees the future of global trade shaped less by cost and more by trust and reliability. “Even in an industry like shipping, you can differentiate on quality.”

Being at the helm of the shipping giant since 2014, Jansen does not buy into the concept of the heroic CEO; he claims that “whether companies are successful is, like, ninety-six or so percent driven by the market that they are in.”