Claus Larner champions DP World Atlas service

Hello Claus. You are a man of much logistics experience. What drew you to the DP World Atlas project?

Claus Larner: I have been in the business for 30-plus years, I’m Danish so you could say I have blue blood in the veins, having started at Maersk back in 1990, and enjoyed many other roles at MSC, Brasil Foods and a Portuguese shipping company – and then the call from DP World came through. They had been trying to develop Atlas and had not really got their head around things in the proper way. When they said they had a reefer project and asked if I could head it up, I thought it was a daunting challenge but why not give it a go? 

It’s been a very rewarding year, the support I have had from the management has been fantastic. There was no pre-conceived perception of how the service should work, they simply said ‘if you think that’s the best way to do things, we will’.

What were the first steps you took to make the Atlas service a reality?

CL: There was the need to research the clients, find out what their pain points are, and understand the narrative, so that we can work out the optimum design for the service. We spent the best part of six months talking to them, both the receivers in Europe and the UK, but importantly the people in Morocco. If you speak to the vegetable exporters, they think that trucks are the best thing since sliced bread, giving them flexibility and speed. We then had to come in with a new concept, and ask, why is nothing going by ocean? Why on earth has no-one been able to make this work for seafreight?

Making that conversion, from truck to ocean, has never been done before, it means you are kind of reverse engineering things – you’re going from what is perceived as a flexible and fast method of transport, to ocean which is perceived as slow. 

What were the fundamentals you hoped to put in place?

CL: With the Atlas service, we had to find a way to be both reliable and flexible at the same time. I think that’s where the value proposition that we offer and the concept that we have come up with is very different and unique. It’s a solution calling at four ports, including London Gateway and Antwerp Gateway which we own and operate, meaning we control the terminals and now we control the vessels. We have agreements with the two Moroccan ports – Agadir and Casablanca – to have berthing windows there, so we are in essence the only shipping line controlling our destiny the whole way around.

The first Atlas service kicked off at the end of 2025. What are your early thoughts?

CL: Well, we’re at eight weeks in. The first six weeks, we saw 100 per cent schedule reliability. And then as you know, the last few weeks have been interesting, shall we say. But to see the service in place has been very rewarding. Our value proposition has been challenged, because the Moroccans have tried other things in the past and have always been disappointed by what happens on the ocean. If you put a box of vegetables on the ocean, one- or two-days difference in transit time means a huge amount for the final outcome and possible losses. 

And of course, what’s happened in the last few weeks is that with the closures at Tanger-Med, lengthy backlogs of trucks has formed a huge queue many tens of kilometres in length, and this is a big problem for time-sensitive products. Suddenly you can say, ‘OK, let’s try the shipping solution instead’. Of course, our own 100 per cent reliability has been hurt a little by the weather, with vessels battling waves of 8-10 metres. But ultimately, we are getting there, while the trucks are stuck. 

People are very appreciative of our offering. We never intended or said we were going to completely replace trucks. We are just a complementary product that offers some relief from the bottlenecks. Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, you have a different option.

We’re going to take a backseat and watch a little bit, but we have had some early adopters who have welcomed the service. Perhaps you could call these adopters visionaries because last year the market grew 20 per cent out of Morocco.

Do you anticipate further growth coming out of Morocco and into Europe?

CL: There is investment going on in Morocco, predominantly from the Spanish and Dutch companies, many of whom are basically moving their production and technology there for various reasons. You have ample land, work and labour in Morocco, things that are in short supply in Europe. 

Look at the market situation. This year I think that Moroccan exports of tomatoes to the UK are bigger than Spain, for example. They are the number one supplier to the UK, and they have done that because they have high quality. It’s the same in Spain too, where the shelves are increasingly stocking Moroccan produce. Maybe that wasn’t the case 15 years ago but look at the way Morocco is developing as a supplier – it’s very exciting.

The Atlas service takes 150,000 tonnes of fresh produce from road to sea annually, cutting emissions by 70 per cent. How important is this?

CL: You take a truck from Morocco to North Europe and back, and that’s a 6,000km journey. I know that sustainability is still a little bit of a soft concept in some areas, but in places like the UK and Scandinavia the retailers are incredibly conscious of this. In other areas it is very much secondary to price. However, you’re dealing with produce and people wanting to eat healthily – I think if the supermarket put a CO2 emissions label on the box that had arrived on a truck, the consumer may not want to buy it anymore!

We are providing an alternative that eliminates the truck from much of the chain. Obviously for the ‘last mile’ you still have to use a truck – although we have invested in our first EV trucks in the UK, so we are looking to provide a green option here too.