KoppelAI × Hapag-Lloyd
Partnership proposal · Confidential · Follow-up, Rotterdam — June 2026

The ease of doing business: how to take it a step further.

You built the best digital infrastructure in shipping. We deliver it to the forwarders who can't reach it yet.

This is not a standard pitch. We studied Hapag-Lloyd — the financials, Strategy 2030, the digital products, your own operational updates. First, we show you what we found. Then what we can add.

13.5M TEUtransported 2025 · +8% in a falling rate market
140countries · 600+ ports · 400 offices
DCSA v2.2.4most current T&T implementation of any major carrier
600–900Dutch forwarders with no direct API or EDI link
Watch The walkthrough

Short on time? The proposal in a few minutes.

A narrated walkthrough of everything in this document — the gap in your market, the tool we built, and the pilot we propose. Read on below, or press play.

KoppelAI × Hapag-Lloyd — proposal walkthrough Loom · narrated by the KoppelAI team
Act 1 Mirror

The year quality won

In 2025, freight rates fell 8% — and volume still grew 8% to 13.5M TEU. In a market that competed on price, Hapag-Lloyd won on quality. That is Strategy 2030 working.

13.5M TEU
+8% in a falling rate market
$20.6B
liner revenue · $3.5B EBITDA
140
countries · 600+ ports · 21 terminals
+ZIM
$4.2B · +713K TEU · 117 vessels
Quality — the promise is measurable
Bookings answered within 1 hour90%
2019: 60%
Schedule reliability — Gemini w/ Maersk~90%
Feb 2025 · a level the industry hadn't seen
On-time delivery target>80%
2030
Strategy 2030 — "Undisputed Number One for Quality"
Digital — ahead of the field
1 Hapag-Lloyd DCSA v2.2.4
· Maersk earlier DCSA version
· CMA CGM earlier DCSA version
· MSC earlier DCSA version
85% dry fleet with IoT · Live Position $15/ctr
100% eBL target 2030 · 190+ ICS2 attrs ready
→ You built everything a forwarder needs. Now the uncomfortable part: who can actually reach it?
Act 2 The paradox

The majority of your market experiences Hapag as a web form.

600–900
Dutch forwarders booking and tracking by hand
800–1,000 freight forwarders in the Netherlands. At most 5–10% have direct API or EDI with a carrier. The rest: phone, email, portal.
What booking with Hapag looks like today
Register + verifycan be rejected
→
Contract nr. requiredor call sales rep
→
40+ field wizard7 tabs, max 10 containers
→
Submitno confirmation email
So he calls. Or emails. And someone at Hapag types it in. Then he types it again into his own system. Three times. Three chances for an error.
Why this gap doesn't close on its own
1
Too small

No IT department. No integration budget. An integration project is structurally out of reach.

2
Won't change

80% of the market. Not stubbornness — they're overloaded and conservative. Same workflow for 30 years.

3
No API / EDI

No connection to start from. Middleware requires a system to connect to — they don't have one.

4
No investment

€50–150K for a system that forces a workflow change? They won't even pick up the phone for it.

→ And this hits you hardest on the exact routes where you are growing.
Act 3 The urgency

Where you grow, visibility is weakest.

40 years in market

West Africa

NileDutch (2021) + DAL (2022). WWA & WAX direct from North Europe. Feeder via Pointe Noire & Luanda. No carrier is rooted deeper.

+6.6% above market

India & Southeast Asia

China+1 strategy. J M Baxi terminals. ZIM adds Intra-Asia. Strategy 2030 structural growth pillar.

Le Havre · Damietta · Tanger Med

Own terminals

You buy into the bottleneck. Le Havre (60%), Wilhelmshaven, SM SAAM, Spinelli. Grow where others hesitate.

We mapped 62 ports. The pattern: your growth regions and your highest-risk ports overlap almost one-to-one.
Hapag growth & investment in the region
Tracking reliability the forwarder actually gets
Europe lanes India / SE Asia West Africa the gap KoppelAI closes
Hapag's data: rich, real-time, IoT-equipped What the non-integrated forwarder receives: little to nothing
PortRiskWhat our data shows
Conakry Guinea CriticalWait times up to 21 days — confirmed in your own Africa Operational Update this month
Tin Can Island Lagos, NG CriticalYour WWA call — structural congestion, milestones unreliable
Monrovia Liberia CriticalWeak port IT — milestones days late or absent
Nouadhibou Mauritania CriticalMinimal digital infrastructure — manual status requests the norm
Beira Mozambique CriticalCorridor hub — a delay here hits three countries at once
Tema Ghana HighCrane outages and congestion — confirmed in your own ops updates
From our dataset of 62 ports · confirmed by Hapag-Lloyd's own Africa Operational Updates
Your own answer — sitting on the shelf

Live Position · $15/container

Real-time GPS. 85% of the dry fleet already equipped. On a shipment to Conakry or Tin Can Island, that is not a gadget — it is the certainty the forwarder needs.

The problem
You know via analytics that clients with Live Position aren't logging in to use it. They bought it. It's dormant. Your best upsell is on the shelf for exactly the routes and the segment where it's worth the most.
Not because the product is wrong — because the step to activate it is one too many.
→ The gap doesn't close itself. Someone has to deliver the last mile — and that mile sells your own products along the way.
Act 4 The customer

This is who we built it for.

A small freight forwarding office. Profitable, well-connected, and trusted by its clients for decades. Not a technology laggard — a business that runs on relationships, not software projects. This is the majority of your market. And right now, none of them can access your digital products.

Who this company is

Two to fifteen people. They handle customs clearance, ocean bookings, transport coordination and client communication — all from a shared inbox and a phone. Their TMS was installed a decade ago and still works. They have no IT team, no innovation budget, and no time to evaluate software. Their clients trust them because they pick up the phone when something goes wrong.

When a carrier asks them to register, verify, and navigate a booking wizard — they call instead. Not because they lack the skills. Because they have forty containers to move today and a client waiting for an update.

2–15staff · no dedicated IT, no innovation budget
600–900offices like this in the Netherlands alone
80%of the market will not change their core workflow
0API or EDI connections — no digital rails to build on
Every other solution
Automates at the client.
Requires a project. Requires a system change. Requires budget and a decision. 80% never start.
Portal login required
Integration project: months and €50K+
New workflow to learn
API or EDI needed at the client
vs
Hapag Mini
Automates between Hapag and the forwarder.
He sends a message. We handle everything. His workflow is untouched. Active within days.
No login, no portal, no registration
Active next week — no project, no migration
Same channel he already uses: email, WhatsApp, voice
No API or system required at the client side
What the forwarder needs
His daily reality
Receives orders and documents by email or WhatsApp
Books carriers by phone or manual portal entry
Tracks shipments by calling or checking websites
Informs his client manually when something moves
What he actually wants
Bookings done fast — without leaving his inbox
Certainty on high-risk routes without logging in
Zero change to his workflow. Zero training. Zero project.
Why he is unreachable today
Too small — no IT, no budget, no capacity for a project
Won't change — 80% of the market. Not stubborn: overloaded.
No API or EDI — nothing to connect to or build on
No investment — a €50K project is never approved
He ends up calling your team. Someone at Hapag types it in. The cycle repeats, every day.
How Hapag Mini responds
How he books — his choice of channel
Email
Send a message with documents — receive a confirmed booking
WhatsApp
Same engine, same DCSA API, same result — different channel
Voice
Call, describe the shipment — transcribed and processed automatically
What he gets
Booking confirmed in under 2 minutes
Proactive port risk alerts — in the same channel
Live Position activated automatically on high-risk routes
No new screen. No training. No change to his workflow.
Why every blocker disappears
No project — onboarded in days
His workflow stays intact — we automate on our side
No API at the client — we connect to Hapag directly
Zero upfront investment — pay per booking
Hapag receives a clean DCSA booking. He sent a message. That is the entire integration.
→ This is the segment. Here is the tool.
Act 4 The tool

What if booking with Hapag was as easy as sending a message?

We built it. Hapag Mini: booking and tracking with Hapag-Lloyd the way the forwarder has worked for thirty years — by message. No portal, no installation, no training, no project. One address is the entire onboarding.

Hapag Mini — how it works powered by KoppelAI
1
He sends an order
Order + documents to one address — email, WhatsApp or voice. Exactly as he'd send a colleague.
2
It reads & fills gaps
Every field traced to source. Missing data filled with informed proposals — terminal, sailing, VGM. Nothing invented.
3
Concept back for review
A complete draft booking, marked. He sees exactly what will go to Hapag before anything is sent.
4
He asks, it advises
"Will I make the gate-in?" — advice plus an updated concept. A booking colleague, not a form.
5
Booked via your API
Only after approval, the booking goes to Hapag via your DCSA Booking API. Confirmation & alerts follow automatically.

The governance question — answered before you ask it

AI that places bookings — who is responsible? That is why the hard rule is in the design: nothing goes to Hapag without human approval on a concept the forwarder has seen. Every change, however small, produces a new concept version first. What you receive is always exactly the document a human approved. Governance by design — no black box.

The booking conversation 9 steps · switch between email and WhatsApp · same engine

The forwarder sends two messages. Hapag receives a clean DCSA booking. That is the entire integration.

From the live agent

A real booking, start to finish — on WhatsApp

Rotterdam → Lagos, 10 tons, two FCL. One message in. A confirmed Hapag-Lloyd booking comes back out — with Ship Green and Live Position offered and added at the right moment. No portal, no forms, no login.

WhatsApp message: customer requests two FCL of household goods from Rotterdam to Lagos
1 · The request
“I want 2 FCL of household goods from Rotterdam to Lagos, 10 tons.” Plain language, in his own words.
WhatsApp message: confirmed Hapag booking with reference, Live Position and Ship Green, and a track-and-trace link
2 · The confirmation
Booked — ref HLCUDEM7249577. Ship Green accepted, Live Position active, Track & Trace link in the same thread.
The full picture — how it connects customer channels · KoppelAI · your DCSA APIs · optional modules

Only public Hapag-Lloyd APIs · EU-hosted & GDPR-compliant · every booking traceable to its source message · sandbox-first onboarding.

→ And what does this deliver for Hapag-Lloyd?
Act 5 Why this wins

The easiest carrier to book with wins market share

+ volume

Volume from a segment no one serves

Every booking that currently goes via a manual call or email — or to a competitor because it is less friction there — becomes a direct, clean DCSA booking at Hapag. AI mail parsing exists; we don't claim to have invented it. What doesn't exist: that parsing connected all the way into your booking system, offered as your onboarding layer, for the segment without infrastructure.

1 message

Friction as a competitive weapon

Booking with Hapag becomes demonstrably easier than with Maersk or MSC: one message versus a portal. Whoever first removes friction for the non-integrated majority shifts market share. We offer this exclusively to Hapag — bounded in time and scope, happy to discuss terms.

$15/ctr

Live Position — finally activated

The moment a booking is confirmed for a high-risk port, Hapag Mini offers Live Position in the same message. No campaign, no separate login. For forwarders who already have it in their contract but aren't using it: KoppelAI connects them automatically, turning a paid-but-dormant feature into active daily value.

−CS load

Cleaner operations

Every booking via Hapag Mini is one call and one manual email less to your customer service — making the 90%-within-one-hour promise easier to keep as volume grows. Structured data from day one means fewer SI corrections downstream, and ICS2-ready by default.

The Live Position conversation — in the same channel

This is what the upsell looks like. No new screen. No login. One message at exactly the right moment.

Hapag Mini● Live
Rotterdam (NLRTM) → Tin Can Island (NGTIN) · Booking HLCU NL4471829
Booking confirmed — API Bhum 2612S, ETD 25 Jul. Cut-offs: VGM 22 Jul · gate-in 23 Jul. I'm monitoring and will alert you if anything shifts.09:35
⚠ Tin Can Island is showing elevated congestion risk — expected wait 3–5 days above schedule. Want to add Live Position for $15 so you can track in real time?09:36
Yes, add it.09:38 ✓✓
Done. GPS active on both containers. I'll send position updates and alert you if the ETA is revised.09:38
Live Position active · HLCU NL4471829 · 2 containerstracking ●
Insights & reporting · live dashboard

Every booking, channel and upsell — measured

What Hapag-Lloyd sees: automation rate, time from order to confirmation, Live Position attach rate on high-risk versus normal lanes, channel mix and upsell revenue per week. The aggregate behind every conversation above — and the data the pilot is judged on.

app.koppel.ai/hapag-lloyd
KoppelAI Booking Agent dashboard for Hapag-Lloyd showing KPIs, bookings per day, channel split, Live Position attach rate, top lanes and upsell revenue
92.9%automation rate
5m 35savg. order → confirmed
35.4%Live Position attach rate
3channels · e-mail, WhatsApp, voice
→ So here is what we propose — and nothing more than this.
Act 6 After the pilot

Prove it in Rotterdam. Then decide, with data.

We are not here to pitch a grand rollout. We are here to make booking with Hapag the easiest it can be — for the Dutch forwarders who can't reach your digital products today. That is the whole proposal.

There are 600 to 900 of them in the Netherlands. The pilot starts with five to ten, on one trade lane, for three months. If the numbers are there — more bookings, faster, less manual work, dormant Live Position finally active — then we have something real to talk about. If they're not, you've risked nothing.

No commitments beyond the pilot. No infrastructure to build. Just proof, in your own backyard. Five to ten forwarders. Three months. Real data.

The ask

One pilot. Five to ten forwarders. Rotterdam.

No global rollout. No big commitment. We want to run a single, focused pilot in the Netherlands — small enough to manage cleanly, large enough to produce real data. If the numbers hold, you decide what comes next.

What the pilot looks like

5 to 10 Rotterdam-based freight forwarders. One trade lane — Rotterdam → West Africa is the natural fit given your WWA service and the port risk data we've shown. Three months. Every booking tracked, every metric transparent.

Who does what

We handle forwarder acquisition, onboarding, technology and day-to-day support. Hapag provides the DCSA APIs that already exist. No new infrastructure, no internal project required on your side.

Month 1
Connect & onboard
DCSA API connection, first 5–10 forwarders onboarded. Tracking live first — read-only, low risk.
Month 2
Booking live
Booking via email & WhatsApp switched on. First Live Position activations on West Africa lanes.
Month 3
Measure & decide
Full data set: volume, speed, activations, CS reduction, retention. We present. You decide what's next.
bookings placed via email / WhatsApp time from order to confirmed booking Live Position activations reduction in manual CS contact forwarder retention after 90 days
After three months, you have real numbers from real forwarders on a real trade lane. No promises, no projections — just results. Then we decide together what the next step is.
Your cargo, our promise. We make sure that promise reaches the forwarder who never had a direct line.