German shipping and container company Hapag-Lloyd is seeking a bigger share of Kenya’s and regional export and import businesses after it opened its new offices in Mombasa and Nairobi on Monday.
The firm targets agricultural goods that include tea, coffee, fruits and textiles as well as chemicals, foodstuffs and a wide range of goods made of plastic or rubber.
Prashant Sindhwani will serve as the country’s manager with 19 employees in Mombasa, six in Nairobi and one in Uganda.
German shipping and container company Hapag-Lloyd is seeking a bigger share of Kenya’s and regional export and import businesses after it opened its new offices in Mombasa and Nairobi on Monday.
The firm targets agricultural goods that include tea, coffee, fruits and textiles as well as chemicals, foodstuffs and a wide range of goods made of plastic or rubber.
Prashant Sindhwani will serve as the country’s manager with 19 employees in Mombasa, six in Nairobi and one in Uganda.
The shipping company will offer two different services through Mombasa port — whereas the China Kenya Express Service (CKX) connects Kenya with Asia ports (such as Singapore and Shanghai), the East Africa Service (EAS2) will serve the west coast of India and Jebel Ali in Dubai.
“Kenya is the economic hub of East Africa and the most important growth region on the continent. By opening our new office in Kenya, we expect to continue our robust growth on the African continent,” said Dheeraj Bhatia, senior managing director, Middle East at Hapag-Lloyd.
The new office also serves landlocked East African countries such as Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan, while eyeing an inland connection to Somalia, Southern Ethiopia and Nortther Tanzania.
"We see an enormous growth potential in Africa and will further invest into our services in selected countries," said the firm’s chief executive officer Rolf Habben Jansen.
The opening of Kenya’s office adds to its five outlets on the continent in South Africa, Egypt, Ghana and Nigeria.
“Kenya as a regional and continental hub for trade relies on strong and efficient logistics service providers. Hapag-Lloyd has been serving the region for many years, so it is a logical step, and a good sign for the business community in Kenya, that they are now establishing a permanent presence in Mombasa and Nairobi,” German Ambassador to Kenya, Annett Günther stated.
This comes at a time when provisional data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) showed that the value of imports dropped by 8.81 percent or Sh158.74 billion to Sh1.64 trillion in 2020 compared with 2019 while exports increased by 7.77 percent to Sh641.21 billion.
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