Compagnie Maritime Belge
The Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB) , also known as Belgian Line , was a Belgian liner shipping company and existed from 1895 to 2000.
history
The shipping company was founded in 1895 at the request of the Belgian King Leopold II and with the support of British investors as Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo (CBMC) to open a liner service from Europe to the Congo Free State, which was then privately owned by Leopold . The first ship of the new shipping company was the Léopoldville , which set out on her first departure from Antwerp for the Congo on February 6, 1895. The Kongoboote (Dutch: Kongoboten) maintained this service from Antwerp for the next sixty years or so.
When the CMBC acquired the shipping company Lloyd Royal Belge in 1930 , the name of the new company was changed to Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB) and new liner services to America and the Far East were opened . In 1960 Armement Deppe , the second largest Belgian shipping company at the time, was taken over and, with the purchase of five bulk carriers between 1963 and 1970 , the company turned to trampoline for the first time . In the early 1970s, the company acquired shares in the Belgian airlines BIAS International and Delta Air Transport . In 1975 a 40% share in the tramp shipping company Bocimar was added, which was acquired in full by 1982. In the late 1980s, CMB spun off all liner shipping activities into a new company, CMB Transport . In July 1991 the majority shareholder of CMB, Société Générale de Belgique, sold its shares to Almabo-Holding and its shipping company Exmar.
In 1995, half of CMB Transport and its liner activities of Compagnie Maritime Belge were taken over by the South African shipping company Safmarine , which relocated its headquarters to Antwerp , in 1998 also took over the remaining shares in CMB Transport and later continued the CMB Linien as SCL. In 1999, Safmarine was taken over by the Danish shipping company AP Møller-Mærsk , but decided to leave the Safmarine brand independent instead of integrating it into the Maersk Line, which was then known as Maersk Sealand. Since 2000, Safmarine no longer carried the name Compagnie Maritime Belge and formally dissolved the line activities under the name CMB.
The Compagnie Maritime Belge (CMB) exists today as a shipping holding / tramp shipping company and financial service provider.
