Danish shipping company A.P. Moller-Maersk will begin expanding onshore services at its global port division to accommodate demands from companies like railway operators and freight haulers, according to newspaper Borsen.
"Until now it has been the big shipping lines that have paid our bills, and that's why we've focused on them. But there are thousands of other customers like freight hauling firms or railway operators, and we now begin to expand our range of customers," Henrik Lundgaard Pedersen, chief commercial officer at APM Terminals, told Borsen.
Maersk, the world's biggest container shipper, said last month that as part of a major restructuring it aims to expand its services to all parts of the supply chain, giving customers the chance to deal with one firm when shipping goods from one side of the world to another.
Logistics operators on land have increasingly been unhappy about the service level at APM Terminals, which has 74 port facilities globally and last year handled nearly 40 million containers.
"I was surprised how consistently the customers were dissatisfied. And how serious it is for them. That's why we with this initiative will try to remedy the situation," he said.
APM Terminals will begin to offer services such as weighing, repackaging and refrigerated storage.
"Today there are other players offering these services. But the question is how many operators the customer wants to use. We believe we can combine it," he said.
Neither Maersk nor APM Terminals was immediately available for comment.
Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen