Maersk partners with Unilever on international logistics

Danish container shipping and logistics giant A.P. Moller – Maersk has entered into a strategic partnership with multinational consumer goods company Unilever for the ocean and air transport.

The parties signed an international freight supply chain management partnership of an undisclosed value, effective from 2022.

The four-year agreement will see the development and management of Unilever’s international control tower solution – an operational management solution that will consolidate the execution of its global ocean and air transport, with the aim of enhancing visibility, increasing efficiency and driving reductions in emissions across its operations.

According to Maersk, the company will provide operational management of international ocean and air transport, underpinned by Maersk´s digital supply chain platform NeoNav, which serves as a core part of the agreement.

Said to be the first of its kind, NeoNav solution unifies the physical and digital logistics worlds to give end-to-end transparency, control, and improved decision-making based on data insights, following industry standards to ensure the confidentiality and neutrality required from operational management providers.

The partnership is expected to bring further resilience, agility and end-to-end visibility to Unilever’s supply chain through Maersk’s logistics expertise and NeoNav management platform.

Michelle Grose, VP of Global Logistics and Fulfilment at Unilever, said that this end-to-end approach will help mitigate risk, increase agility, and achieve the company-wide target of becoming carbon neutral by 2039.

“We are excited that Unilever has chosen our logistics expertise and our technology platform NeoNav to provide an overview of the links that make up its ocean and air logistics operations. At the same time, NeoNav also offers actionable insights on how to optimize the supply chain, for example in terms of carbon emissions”, added Aymeric Chandavoine, head of Logistics & Services at A.P. Moller – Maersk.

The shipping giant scored several transport and logistics agreements over the past two months. In October, Maersk signed a global end-to-end logistics agreement with food manufacturer Danish Crown. The three-year end-to-end agreement covers all Danish Crown’s business units, delivering solutions on ocean services, inland logistics and cold chain logistics.

In November, the company formed a long-term strategic partnership with wind turbines manufacturer Vestas for all containerised transport and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with global eCommerce furniture company Zinus for logistics services in 2022.