The Claus-Peter Offen shipping company was set up in Hamburg in 1971.

Claus-Peter Offen bought his first ship on 9 June 1971, at an auction held at the Hamburg Local Court. That was the “Annie Hugo Stinnes”, a small freighter of 4,000 dwt, built in 1959. She was renamed “Holstein”.

In the years that followed, the young shipping company purchased further vessels, initially second hand general-cargo vessels. By 1978 the fleet already comprised 12 freighters with up to 14,000 dwt.

Claus-Peter Offen recognised at an early stage that the trend was moving towards the container as a standardized transport unit in shipping. He placed an order with Seebeckwerft AG, Bremerhaven, for construction of six 12,000 dwt multi-purpose container ships, each with a container capacity of 575 TEU.

1978 marks the beginning of the establishment of the Claus-Peter Offen container ship fleet.

Several more ships, significantly larger, were delivered initially by Flender Werft AG, Lübeck, and by Thyssen Nordseewerke, Emden. But after that, CP Offen ordered newbuildings exclusively from shipyards in South Korea. The first of these orders went to Samsung Heavy Industries.

By the end of 2004 the CP Offen fleet already numbered 44 ships with a capacity of 120,000 TEU and 1.6 million tonnes, and was on the way to becoming one of the world’s largest providers of container ship tonnage.

Since the beginning of 2003, the company has continued dynamic expansion of its fleet, ordering many more newbuildings from the South Korean shipyards Samsung Heavy Industries, Hanjin Heavy Industries, Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering. These are ships up to 14,000 TEU / 165,000 dwt with a length overall of 360 metres (see fleet).

The total volume of the current programme of newbuildings is in excess of 450,000 TEU. The delivery dates of all these ships are between 2008 and 2011, increasing the total size of this highly modern container ship fleet to some 110 units with a total of more than 750,000 TEU.

At the beginning of 2007, the company made its first move into the chemicals and product tanker market. A new company Claus-Peter Offen Tankschiffreederei (Offen Tankers) was formed; eight special-purpose tankers with 36,000 dwt and a further eight with 52,000 dwt were ordered from the Hyundai Mipo yard in South Korea, for delivery starting in 2008.

The company currently has a workforce of approximately 3,000 people on shore and at sea.