Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller – Maersk has acquired HUUB, a Portuguese cloud-based logistics startup.
This is company’s third acquisition this year within E-commerce logistics and it comes through the company’s venture activities with Maersk Growth.
Founded in 2015, HUUB specialises in technology solutions for B2C warehousing for the fashion industry.
“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,” Vincent Clerc , Executive Vice President and CEO of Ocean & Logistics, A.P. Moller – Maersk, commented.
Once HUUB’s technology is embedded into Maersk’s existing solutions, customers will get fully integrated Maersk E-commerce Logistics products with user-friendly customer and partner interfaces. Furthermore, Maersk customers will have a single source of truth for stock visibility, the company explained.
“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. In addition, there is the scale that allows disruption to occur, feeding it with the volumes that can make a difference,” Tiago Paiva , HUUB CEO, said.
“For HUUB, this joint path that now starts with Maersk represents both. Firstly, the validation of our disruptive vision and product. And secondly, Maersk is the scale enabler that will allow our platform to serve … customers and lead the eCommerce 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 customs broker; Performance Team , a warehousing and distribution specialist and, KGH a customs services.
In August 2021, Maersk expanded its E-commerce footprint by announcing the acquisition of Visible MSC and its intention to acquire Europe B2C.