ZIM Israel Navigation Company

ZIM was founded in 1945. It baught its first ship together with Harris and Dixon (based at London) - a ship that was refurbished and renamed to be "Kedma", that reached Palestine on the summer of 1947.

During her first years, her main task was transporting hundreds of thousands of immigrant to the emerging state. Some of its ships, that were arrested by the british mandate authorities, re-joined the company's fleet after the establishment of the state of Israel.

The company continued to purchase more ship, among them "Negba", "Artza" and "Galila".

During the 1948 war, the company was the sole maritime connection of the state of Israel, supplying food, goods and military equipment.

In 1953, following the reparations agreement between Israel and West Germany, some of the money was allocated to the purchase of 36 new ships, that were a massive expansion of ZIM's fleet.

During the 1950s and 1960s ZIM's main line of business was passenger ships, alongside a constant expansion of the goods shipping business. Passenger lines were a common means of transport before the emergence of cheep aerial transport, and pleasure cruises were also popular. ZIM sailed the Mediterranean Sea, as well as having regular routes to the United States. some of its ships cruised to the Caribbeans during the winter. 1964 saw the completion of the passenger ship "Shalom", that turned out to be a failure, marking the end of ZIMs passenger ship era.

During the 1960s ZIM started to draw focus to cargo ships, and obtained several special-purpose ships, including refrigerated shipping, and oil tankers. ZIM transported crude oil from Iran to Israel, and oil byproducts from Israel to Europe.

The 1970s saw ZIM expanding into to the container shipping business. ZIM ordered 6 such ships, and gradually made this its main line of business, where it is considered one of the largest in the world.

On 1981 one of the company's ships - "Massade", was lost at sea.

ZIM suffered, alongside other shipping companies, from the low in maritime shipping in the beginning of the 1980s, but it has recovered, and during the 1990s built 15 more ships in Germany.

The ownership of ZIM was divided between the Israeli government and "Hachevra Le-Israel", but is currently (2004) privately owned by the Ofer brothers group.

• The company website