The Bundeskartellamt, Germany's competition authority, has granted approval for Cosco Shipping Holdings Co., Ltd. to acquire an 80% stake in Konrad Zippel Spediteur GmbH, based in Hamburg.

Cosco is a global container shipping company, already present in Germany with a minority stake of 24.99% in HHLA Container Terminal Tollerort GmbH at the Port of Hamburg. Zippel specializes in logistics, focusing on container transport between seaports and inland areas, often utilizing combined transport, particularly by rail.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt, stated that while Cosco primarily transports containers by sea, Zippel organizes the inland transport of these containers. The two companies operate at different levels of the transport chain and do not compete directly. Therefore, there are no competitive concerns regarding the merger.

In 2024, over 12 million containers were handled at the ports of Hamburg and Bremerhaven, with Zippel managing only a small fraction of this cargo, mainly by rail. The Bundeskartellamt's investigation concluded that the merger would not significantly impact other shipping companies' access to logistics services or other logistics providers' access to shipping customers.

The Bundeskartellamt's role is solely to assess the competitive effects of merger proposals, while any security-related aspects fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.