Panama Canal Railroad Purchase Amount Revealed

The operation of the Panama Canal Railway will be in the hands of an independent division of the Danish shipping company Maersk. APM Terminals (APMT), an independent division of Danish shipping company Maersk, has invested $600 million to take over the operation of the Panama Canal railway, Economy and Finance Minister Felipe Chapman revealed Monday.  The transaction between APM Terminal and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited and Lanco Group/Mi-Jack, the concessionaire of the freight and passenger train through the Panama Canal Railway Company (PCRC) since 1998, was announced on April 2, but without revealing any figures. 

Chapman spoke about the railroad during a local radio interview on Monday, citing the APM Terminal transaction as an example of renewed investor confidence in Panama, thanks, he explained, to the economic program being implemented by the government of José Raúl Mulino, who took office in July 2024.  “A company, Maersk, which is one of the largest shipping companies in the world, has purchased a railroad for $600 million, when all estimates of how much such a deal was worth were almost a fifth of that,” Chapman said.

How is the Port Procurement Process Progressing?

At the same time, the minister added, “there are at least four or five global operators interested in the ports of Cristóbal, Balboa, Telfers, Corozal, and others.”  The APM Terminal transaction was completed amidst the troubled development of another negotiation with a major impact on the Panamanian port and logistics system: the transfer of control of the concession for the ports of Balboa (Pacific) and Cristóbal (Atlantic), located at the entrance to the Canal and operated for more than 25 years by Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison, to a consortium formed by the American asset manager BlackRock and Terminal Investment Limited (TiL), the port arm of the shipping giant MSC.  This operation, part of the global sale of more than 40 ports operated by CK Hutchison for nearly $23 billion, has been halted by China in the context of a geopolitical battle with the United States.  And in this context, other interested parties have emerged in the global transaction between CK Hutchison and BlackRock, such as the Chinese shipping giant Cosco and the French company CMA CGM, according to reports in the specialized press.  Panama’s five main ports are located around the interoceanic canal and are operated by companies from the U.S., Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.