Maersk invests in digital freight forwarder

FreightHub, Europe’s first digital freight forwarder, has raised $30m in its Series B financing round. Rider Global, a venture fund founded by logistics experts, took the lead in this funding round and was welcomed as a new investor together with Maersk Growth, the corporate venture arm of A.P. Moller-Maersk. Existing investors Northzone, Global Founders Capital (GFC) and Cherry Ventures also took part. London-based investment firm Unbound, founded by Shravin Mittal and focused on deploying long term capital in industry-changing tech companies, significantly expanded its stake.

“Our recent growth trajectory has confirmed the potential that our digital solutions can realize for both our customers and FreightHub’s internal processes. We will use the fresh capital to further develop our digital service offering and to expand our presence in Asia,” explained founder and CEO Ferry Heilemann. “With Maersk Growth, we have onboarded a new investor that offers extensive strategic insight and allows for mutual collaboration opportunities.”

Heilemann co-founded the company in 2016 together with Erik Muttersbach, Michael Wax and Dr Fabian Heilemann in Berlin.

“FreightHub is a well-run company with a promising technology in the digital freight forwarder segment. This makes it a great fit with Maersk Growth’s investment strategy which aims to explore and mature promising technologies with a potential to improve supply chain management and customer experience,” said Jeppe Høier, partner at Maersk Growth. “As a digital leader in container logistics, we believe in cooperation and learning experiences across the digital ecosystem of our industry. We look forward to accompanying FreightHub in further developing as digital freight forwarder and believe our cooperation can help both companies build on their capabilities and offerings to the benefit of existing and new customers in the SME segment.”

FreightHub offers transport services for sea, air and rail freight, built on digitised processes – from booking, communication, data exchange and document management to supply chain optimisation.

Last month, Maersk Growth invested in Australian start-up IncoDocs, a company that has developed a system to simplify and automate complex documentation processes.

Under the leadership of Soren Skou, A.P. Moller-Maersk has pursued an aggressive digital buildup of capabilities in recent years. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last year, Skou stressed: “Our industry must develop new technology and software solutions in open, innovative communities. We need to digitize from the inside of our business, but at the same time, finding the best solutions will require our industry to partner with companies across a wide range of industries.”