http://www.zim.com/
9 Andrei Sakharov St. Matam
P.O.B. 1723, Haifa 31016 Israel
ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Limited is a large integrated container shipping services firm based in Haifa, Israel. The company was established in 1945, and currently maintains offices in 450 locations in over 135 countries around the world. In 2012, the company reported revenues of nearly $4 billion and employed about 6,000 land and sea-based employees.
Large Vessel Fleet
ZIM operates a fleet of 100 vessels, about 30 of which are fully owned by the company, while the rest are leased. The ships range in size from relatively small vessels to megaships capable of ferrying between 8,000 and 10,000 twenty-foot containers in a single load. Last year, ZIM’s vessels transported over 2.4 million containers to 180 shipping ports around the world. The shipper offers a total of 60 service routes that it operates on a weekly, daily and fixed-day basis.
Cargo Shipping
ZIM is licensed to transport a wide range of containerized cargo, including cars and other automobiles, perishable goods, hazardous cargo and outsized or out-of gauge cargo. The company’s inventory of over 400,000 containers includes about 35,000 special equipment containers that are equipped to transport perishable and frozen foods items, pharmaceutical products and other types of reefer cargo.
U.S. Operations
ZIM Integrated Shipping Services has its U.S. headquarters in Norfolk, VA. The U.S. office operates 12 weekly cargo services from 11 ports along the U.S. East and West Coast. The services include direct routes from U.S. ports to ports in South America, the Caribbean, Asia, Northern Europe and the Middle East. The Norfolk operation also doubles as ZIM’s headquarters for Canada and South America. The company’s largest overseas operation, however, is in China. The Israeli firm currently operates over 30 offices and employs hundreds of people in China.
Sophisticated Technology Infrastructure
The company prides itself on having one of the most advanced information technology infrastructures in the container shipping industry. Over the past several years, it has spent close to $100 million in implementing a modern and centralized IT infrastructure for managing its operations. Its technology investments have allowed the shipping firm to offer an impressive array of electronic services for handling everything from booking and scheduling, to tracking and tracing individual containers during transit.
Revenue Outlook
According to a ZIM Integrated Shipping Services review in Businessweek magazine, the company’s consolidated revenues in 2012 were about 6 percent higher than its revenues for the previous year. Despite this, the company recorded an operating loss of over $430 last year as a resulting of an overall slowdown in its key markets, the ZIM review in Businessweek noted.