Entering the marbled foyer of the Hapag-Lloyd building on the Binnenalster Lake in Hamburg, the company’s mantra hangs before you, as proud as a continent:

“Mein Feld ist die Welt” - my field is the world.

Perhaps that would have been a fair statement in the 1850s, when Hapag and Norddeutscher Lloyd operated independently and actually turned a profit. The last five financial quarters reveal losses numbering in the hundreds of millions of euros, and have sat largely in the red for years. The only likely reason that such a gigantic company – the world’s sixth-largest – continues to run, is that it is backed by a 36,9% ownership stake belonging to Albert Ballin Consortium, which, in the true sense of the word, owns the city of Hamburg. Or at least, almost every public service in and around the city, including water works and supply, public transport, the Hamburg airport and also shipping and banking. 

Hapag-Lloyd currently reports a total debt of €2,620 million. The company is said to have an employee structure which holds one manager to every two employees. Go you guys.

Also rumoured is that the company ships empty containers on its fleet, so that its ships appear well-loaded. Guys, really? That’s the shipping equipment of pretending to text on your iPhone while you’re waiting alone at your table at Borchardt, so that no one thinks you’ve been stood-up.

So, no one’s really shipping to Hamburg all that much. At least, evidently, or no? Halt!, stop!, Hapag-Lloyd, re-think that manager programme, sell off some ships, and stop dreaming that Hamburg is still the shipping powerhouse that it was in the 1600s, at which point the Hanseatic League began to become obsolete. 

And yet, Hamburg continues to push forward with its shipping agenda. Most people won’t know this, because most people don’t actually know where Hamburg is, but Hamburg is built up around a river - not a coastline. Testy choice for when one considers that ships grow larger. That wasn’t exactly foresight on your part, Hanseatic League. As such, the new supermegalithic container ships can’t make it down the Elbe River to Hamburg, unless the river is flooding or at very high tide, and unless the ships themselves are filled below capacity. 

river is flooding or at very high tide, and unless the ships themselves are filled below capacity. And even then, the ships clear the river floor with just one metre to spare. A metre, you guys. To compensate (because a debt of €2,620 million justifies market need for this?), the city of Hamburg is trying to decide whether or not to dredge the Elbe River, which would entail deepening 85km of river bed by one metre: Hoorah for cost-benefit analysis. An reasonable alternative would be for larger ships to call at Wilhelmshafen, and have their cargo linked onto Germany’s well-developed rail lines. But then Hamburg really takes the punch. 

Where art thou, when thou holdest unto 500 year-old dreams? Not in the present, not being realistic. 

It is interesting that the shipping industry has sunk over the past few years, when considering that society has become the most consumptive that it ever has been, and that global consumer spending has almost largely recovered from the last crash. What happened to all that stuff that we’re meant to be buying?

But let us not look to gargantuan ships loftily sailing the open seas. Let us note that China is implementing plans to build a rail line to connect itself with Europe through Russia, which would largely take the place of shipping. This approach is different to what Cecil John Rhodes hoped to establish in Africa, where a rail line linked Africa’s resource and commodity farms to its ports for sail to Europe for production: China isn’t extracting from itself, it’s selling on manufactured goods with materials sourced from the west coast of Africa. China is establishing itself as the world’s Walmart. And that’s more absolute than deepening a river by 1 metre.