Danish container giant Maersk’s port operations unit, APM Terminals, today said it has acquired the Panama Canal Railway Company (PCRC) from Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited (CPKC) and the U.S. company Lanco Group/Mi‑Jack.
PCRC operates a 47-mile, single-line railway adjacent to the Panama Canal that mainly facilitates cargo movement between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The company generated 2024 revenue of $77 million and earnings in EBITDA of $36 million.
The international deal comes as the Trump Administration has been pressuring Panama to turn over canal operations to the U.S., citing Chinese companies’ ownership of certain terminal facilities as a potential threat to American national security. But that could be more complicated than it sounds, as shown by the sudden delay in completing a recent offer by a consortium headed by the U.S. investment firm BlackRock Inc. to buy Hong Kong-based port operator CK Hutchison’s stake in a Panama Canal port.
However, today’s move does not affect that balance of power, since it occurs between corporations located in Panama, Canada, and the U.S. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but APM purchased the railroad as a 50/50 joint venture shared by CPKC and the Lanco Group/Mi‑Jack, which is an Illinois-based material handling provider that makes rubber-tired gantry cranes for port, intermodal, and industrial applications.
And CPKC described the deal simply as an “infrastructure investment” that complemented its existing expertise. “The Panama Canal Railway Company represents an attractive infrastructure investment in the region aligned to our core services of intermodal container movement,” Keith Svendsen, CEO of APM Terminals, said in a release. “The company is highly regarded for its operational excellence and will provide a significant opportunity for us to offer a broader range of services to the global shipping customers we serve.”
As part of A.P. Moller-Maersk, APM Terminals has been developing and operating advanced ports and container terminals for over half a century, and has run as an independent division since 2001. The unit today runs 60 ports and container terminals around the globe and has several more in development.
