Hapag-Lloyd said it has benefited from "significantly higher" freight rates due to scarce transport capacities as it reported higher income in the first half of the year.

It said EBITDA during the first six months reached US$4.2 billion as the Group profit climbed to US$ 3.3 billion during the period. 

"In a market with very strong demand for container transports, we have benefitted from significantly improved freight rates and look back on a very good first half year. Among other things, we were able to reduce our net debt by US$1.5 billion, although we paid out a significantly higher dividend compared to the prior year," said Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd.

The shipping line said revenues increased in the first half year of 2021 by approximately 51% to US$10.6 billion, mainly because of a 46%higher average freight rate of US$1,612 per TEU compared to US$1,104 per TEU earlier.

"The freight rate development was the result of high demand combined with scarce transport capacities and severe infrastructural bottlenecks," Hapag Lloyd said, adding that transport volumes were up to 6,004 TTEU and thereby 4% higher than the comparable figure for the previous year, which was impacted by a slump in demand in the second quarter due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Hapag Lloyd said the current situation of bottlenecks in the supply chain is expected to persist through the second half of the year.

Normalisation not expected before Q1 2022

"Hapag-Lloyd expects earnings to remain strong in the second half of the financial year," it said, with EBITDA for the full year is expected to be in the range of US$9.2 to US$11.2 billion.

Jansen said normalization is not expected before the first quarter of next year.

"The bottlenecks in the supply chains continue to cause enormous strains and inefficiencies for all market participants and we have to do our utmost to resolve them jointly as soon as possible," he said.

"Looking at the market environment today, we however do not believe that the situation will return to normal any time soon – despite all the efforts made and the additional container box capacity that is being injected. We currently expect the market situation only to ease in the first quarter of 2022 at the earliest," Jansen added.