A container ship operated by Chinese state-owned group COSCO at port. The company is no longer active only at sea, but is increasingly investing in terminals and hinterland logistics.
Chinese state-owned shipping group COSCO may no longer be allowed to expand its position in German logistics. According to information obtained by Handelsblatt, the German government intends to prevent the group from acquiring 80 percent of Hamburg-based freight forwarder Konrad Zippel. The newspaper cites a confidential government memorandum; Reuters has since picked up the report and likewise refers to that source.
No final decision has yet been publicly confirmed by the German government. The case, however, goes far beyond a single corporate takeover. It illustrates how competition policy, investment freedom and national security are increasingly intersecting along the same supply chains.
German government reportedly plans to block the takeover
According to the report, the federal government intends to stop the acquisition on security grounds.
That would put it at odds with Germany’s Federal Cartel Office.
The competition authority approved COSCO’s acquisition of an 80 percent stake in Zippel back in February. At the time, its president Andreas Mundt said there were no competition concerns.
The reasoning is straightforward: COSCO and Zippel operate along the same supply chain, but at different stages.
COSCO is one of the world’s largest container shipping companies and primarily handles maritime transport. Zippel takes over containers at seaports and moves them inland by truck and, in particular, through combined rail transport. The two companies therefore do not compete directly with one another.
The Cartel Office also found that Zippel handles only a small fraction of the containers moving through Hamburg and Bremerhaven. It did not expect the transaction to significantly impede competing shipping lines or freight forwarders.
At the same time, Mundt made clear where the Cartel Office’s mandate ends: foreign investment law and national-security concerns are not part of merger control.
And that is precisely where the current case begins.
Germany’s domestic intelligence service had already raised concerns
At the end of April, German broadcasters NDR and WDR reported that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had opposed the takeover during the government’s investment-screening process.
According to their reporting at the time, the security authorities were not looking at Zippel in isolation. Their main concern was reportedly the cumulative effect of COSCO’s investments in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
The term used was “cumulative acquisitions.”
The logic differs fundamentally from that of traditional competition analysis.
From an antitrust perspective, each individual investment may be relatively small or unproblematic. From a security perspective, however, what matters may be the position created along an entire transport and information chain when several investments are combined.
COSCO brings containers to Europe. In the Port of Hamburg, the group already owns a minority stake in a terminal. Zippel organizes their onward transport from the port into the German and European hinterland.
Taken together, these individual assets create an increasingly integrated section of the logistics chain.
Zippel is not officially classified as critical infrastructure
That makes a response by the German government to parliament earlier this year particularly noteworthy.
According to the government, Konrad Zippel Spediteur GmbH & Co. KG is not currently registered as an operator of critical infrastructure under Germany’s BSI Act.
That does not mean a foreign takeover must automatically be approved.
German foreign trade law allows the federal government to review investments from non-EU countries if they could potentially affect public order or security.
The review can take into account whether the acquiring company is directly or indirectly controlled by the government of a third country. According to the federal government, potential access to sensitive information is also already part of the investment-screening process.
COSCO is a Chinese state-owned enterprise.
The Zippel case therefore highlights an increasingly important distinction: strategic relevance does not necessarily begin only when a company carries the formal label of “critical infrastructure.”
Logistics generates data as well as cargo flows
Modern supply chains no longer consist solely of containers, trucks and rail networks.
Logistics companies know which goods arrive at which port and when, which customers order them, which routes are used to transport them and where bottlenecks or particular dependencies exist.
On a large scale, such information can provide insight into industrial production structures and supply chains.
In April, the German government confirmed that potential access to sensitive information is considered during investment screening. It did not, however, publicly disclose the details of its assessment of the Zippel case.
Several answers to parliamentary questions were classified as “VS – Vertraulich,” or confidential, and deposited in the Bundestag’s secure document facility.
Months before today’s report, it was therefore already clear that the government was not treating the proposed acquisition as an ordinary corporate transaction.
The Tollerort precedent
Hamburg is not new territory for COSCO.
As early as 2022, the group sought to acquire 35 percent of the operating company behind the Tollerort container terminal, which belongs to Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG.
The proposal triggered a fierce political dispute.
The German cabinet ultimately limited the transaction to less than 25 percent. COSCO was not allowed to obtain strategic special rights or veto rights over key business or personnel decisions.
The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs explicitly justified the partial prohibition by citing a potential threat to public order and security.
In the end, COSCO acquired 24.99 percent.
That kept the stake formally below the threshold that would have allowed the company significantly greater corporate influence.
The Zippel case is markedly different.
This is not about a minority stake, but an 80 percent holding — a clear majority in a company responsible for moving goods from the ports into the hinterland.
If the German government does indeed prohibit the acquisition, the move would therefore amount to more than a repeat of the Tollerort compromise.
From the terminal to the entire transport chain
The issue has also become more prominent at European level.
In March, the European Commission presented its new ports strategy, describing ports as strategic hubs for trade, energy supply, defence and economic security.
By 2028, Brussels intends, among other things, to develop guidelines for assessing foreign investments and establish a system for monitoring foreign stakes in European ports more systematically.
One detail from the preparatory consultation is particularly relevant.
Authorities and other stakeholders explicitly pointed to growing vertical integration in maritime logistics: shipping companies are no longer investing only in vessels, but increasingly in terminals and hinterland services as well.
From a business perspective, such integration can increase efficiency. A group can coordinate transport chains more closely, improve capacity utilisation and offer customers end-to-end logistics services.
At the same time, however, a single player gains influence over several stages of the supply chain.
That combination — shipping line, terminal and hinterland logistics — is precisely what is at stake in the COSCO-Zippel deal.
Germany is changing its approach to Chinese investment
The case also comes at a time when Germany is recalibrating its economic relationship with China.
China remains one of the most important trading partners and sales markets for German industry. Neither the German government nor major industry associations regards economic decoupling as a realistic objective.
Instead, the increasingly dominant concept is “de-risking.”
In September, the Federation of German Industries, BDI, reiterated that China remains an important market, production location and innovation partner. At the same time, it argued that Europe must reduce supply-chain risks and adopt a more strategic approach to state-influenced competition.
The distinction matters.
De-risking does not mean excluding Chinese investments as a matter of principle.
It means taking a closer look at which economic dependencies could have political or security consequences in a crisis.
Logistics is increasingly becoming one of those sectors.
Germany also plans tighter investment-screening rules
The federal government is meanwhile working on a reform of its investment-screening regime.
According to its response to parliament, a standalone Investment Screening Act is planned. The rules currently spread across Germany’s Foreign Trade and Payments Act and the Foreign Trade and Payments Ordinance are to be consolidated.
At the same time, risks in security-sensitive sectors are to be taken into account more systematically and existing loopholes closed.
The policy challenge is a balancing act.
As an export-oriented economy, Germany depends on foreign capital. Broad protectionism would make investment more expensive and could provoke retaliatory measures from other countries.
At the same time, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the economic consequences that one-sided strategic dependencies can create.
With China, the same question arises under different conditions — not only in raw materials, semiconductors or telecommunications, but increasingly in transport infrastructure as well.
Competition law and national security can reach different conclusions
The Zippel case therefore illustrates why acquisitions are increasingly being examined from two very different perspectives.
Germany’s Federal Cartel Office asks whether a merger restricts competition.
In Zippel’s case, its conclusion was no.
The investment-screening process asks whether an acquisition could create risks to public order or security.
Both reviews can therefore legitimately reach different conclusions.
A company can be too small to dominate a relevant market while still occupying a position in the infrastructure that is strategically significant.
This distinction is likely to become increasingly common in the logistics sector.
Economic power does not arise solely from market share.
It can also come from controlling the right nodes along a supply chain.
If the German government ultimately blocks COSCO’s acquisition of Zippel, the message would extend far beyond this one transaction.
At the Tollerort terminal, the Chinese state-owned group was still allowed to acquire a 24.99 percent stake in 2023.
Three years later, the next step along the same logistics chain may already be considered one step too far.
