Maersk has announced the acquisition of HUUB, a Portuguese cloud-based logistics start-up, specialised in technology solutions for B2C warehousing for the fashion industry.

Maersk said this is its third acquisition this year within the e-commerce logistics.

“HUUB is a great fit for Maersk ... 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,” highlights Vincent Clerc, executive vice president and CEO of Ocean & Logistics, A.P. Moller – Maersk.

Maersk said once HUUB´s technology is embedded into its existing solutions, customers will get fully integrated Maersk e-commerce logistics products with modern highly user-friendly customer and partner interfaces. 

Furthermore, Maersk said its 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,” said Tiago Paiva, HUUB CEO.

Paiva noted that the deal with Maersk is a validation of its disruptive vision and product. It also cited Maersk's scale that will allow its platform to serve customers and lead the e-commerce logistics market.

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, acquiring Vandegrift, a custom broker; 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 MSC and 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 its customers.