By Costas Paris
LONDON--France's CMA CGM SA, the world's third-biggest
container-shipping operator by capacity, is in talks to buy
Germany's Oldenburg-Portugiesische Dampfschiffs-Rhederei GmbH as
part of its strategy to control so-called short-sea operators that
will feed cargo into its oceangoing vessels, a person familiar with
the situation said.
"If it works out it, the deal could be announced this week," the
person said, adding that the value of the deal is still being
discussed.
OPDR owns five small container ships and charters a further
three, each able to carry around 700 containers. It mainly moves
cargo from Northern European ports to Spain, Portugal and
Morocco.
CMA CGM has bought a number of smaller container-shipping
operators in recent years to feed cargo into its giant container
vessels that can move more than 17,000 containers each. The company
trails A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S's Maersk Line, of Denmark, and
Swiss-based Mediterranean Shipping Co. in capacity.
The French giant recently signed a deal with China Shipping
Container Lines Co. and United Arab Shipping Co. to form an
alliance called Ocean Three that plans to operate a combined 129
vessels, controlling around 20% of all cargo moved on the
Asia-Europe loop, 14% of cargo crossing the Pacific Ocean and 10%
of that crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
Write to Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com
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