Maersk makes another move into E-commerce with its first tech acquisition

September 17, 2021

A.P. Moller – Maersk announces the acquisition of HUUB, a Portuguese cloud-based logistics start-up, specialised in technology solutions for B2C warehousing for the fashion industry. This is Maersk´s third acquisition this year within E-commerce Logistics and it comes through our venture activities with Maersk Growth.

As a disruptive force in the e-commerce space, the acquisition of HUUB strengthens Maersk´s technology capabilities, bringing the best attributes of a modern entrepreneurial agile workplace.

HUUB is a great fit for Maersk, a curious team with inspiring founders. With HUUB we are acquiring world class capabilities and talent that will allow us to greatly accelerate the development of our omni-channel offering. This will make it much easier for our customers to focus on their core business of producing and selling goods and swiftly bringing them to the end-consumers.

Vincent Clerc

Executive Vice President and CEO of Ocean & Logistics, A.P. Moller – Maersk.

Once HUUB´s technology is embedded into Maersk’s existing solutions, customers will get fully integrated Maersk E-commerce Logistics products with modern highly user-friendly customer and partner interfaces. Furthermore, Maersk customers will have a single source of truth for stock visibility.

Since day one, HUUB has had two main purposes: disruption and scale. Disruption to have the capacity – and courage – to say that a multi-billion dollar industry needs a digital revolution and to envision and create a revolutionary supply chain platform and ecosystem. In addition, there is the scale that allows disruption to occur, feeding it with the volumes that can make a difference. For HUUB, this joint path that now starts with Maersk represents both. Firstly, the validation of our disruptive vision and product. And secondly, Maersk is the scale enabler that will allow our platform to serve amazing customers and lead the eCommerce logistics market

Tiago Paiva

HUUB CEO.

Maersk Growth, the corporate venture arm of A.P. Moller – Maersk, first engaged with HUUB in May 2019 as they believe collaboration with start-ups is an important lever for innovation. With this acquisition by Maersk, Maersk Growth as well as the rest of the investors are exiting the company.

To strengthen its integrated logistics offering, Maersk set out two and a half years ago on an M&A journey, first acquiring Vandegrift, a custom broker, acquiring Performance Team, a warehousing and distribution specialist and, KGH a Customs Services. On earlier August 2021, Maersk expanded its E-commerce footprint by announcing the acquisition of Visible SCMand its intention to acquire Europe B2C.

HUUB is the third acquisition within E-commerce Logistics, underlining that this is a new and important strategic focus area towards delivering integrated logistics to customers.

Source: Maersk