HHLA and COSCO Shipping Port have finalised the acquisition of a 24,99 per cent share by the second at the Container Terminal Tollerort. The two parties signed the official agreement on Monday, 19 June, following a successful investment screening process.

The signing of the agreement came a month after the German federal government approved the involvement of COSCO as a minority shareholder in CTT and after almost a year of disputes on whether COSCO should get a share. “The collaboration between the partners strengthens the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg’s position as a logistics hub in the North Sea and Baltic region and Germany’s position as an industrial nation”, commented HHLA.

A short chronicle

Initial talks, which started in September 2022, saw COSCO willing to purchase 35 per cent of the shares of the terminal. However, the federal government members were not too keen on approving the deal, with Robert Habeck, the German minister of economy, asking to halt COSCO’s rise in the port of Hamburg.

On the other hand, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz tried to push to finalise the deal. At the end of October, the parties agreed to settle for 24,9 per cent of CTT shares. Some optimism already surfaced in January when HHLA and COSCO’s subsidiary Cosco Shipping Ports Ltd started finalising the last details of the operations.

Besides becoming a CTT shareholder, COSCO withdrew from the Duisburg Gateway Terminal. The Chinese company owned 30 per cent of the terminal’s shares and decided to sell them to duisport in June. The deal was kept a secret until the end of October, and the reasons for this initiative were never officially disclosed.