THE COMPANY
Built like the bird.
The Arctic tern flies from pole to pole every year — the longest journey in nature, made calmly, twice. We named the company after it in 2011 and have been engineering to its standard ever since.
ORIGINS
Three planners, one van line.
Tern started as a single overnight van line between Copenhagen and Oslo, run by two airline cargo planners and a systems engineer who believed delivery promises should be engineered, not hoped for. Fifteen years later the same three principles run a 96-country network.
2011 — founded on the Nordhavn quay
2017 — Rotterdam gateway opens
2026 — 214 hubs, 12,400 people
Read the newsroom
WHAT WE BELIEVE
Four rules we don’t bend.
Precision over promises
We publish our on-time rate weekly, audited. If we can’t hit a window, we don’t sell it.
Calm under peak
Black Friday is a Tuesday here. We rehearse failure so customers never meet it.
The last 50 metres matter
A perfect journey ruined at the door is ruined. Couriers are trained — and paid — like it.
Leave the sky cleaner
78% electric last-mile, carbon on every invoice, and a hard 2030 net-zero line.
FIFTEEN YEARS
Milestones on the migration.
2011
2014
2017
2020
2023
2026
LEADERSHIP
The people on the bridge.
Astrid Holm-Sørensen
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Ex-SAS Cargo. Wrote the first Tern promise on a boarding pass: ‘On time or honest.’
Daniel Okafor
CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER
Ran the Rotterdam gateway launch; still does a courier shift every December 23rd.
Yui Nakamura
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
Leads TernOS. Believes a routing model should apologise before a human has to.
RESPONSIBILITY
Fast shouldn’t cost the sky.
Every invoice carries a carbon line. Every hub runs on renewables. And every year the number we care most about — grams of CO₂ per parcel — drops again.
78%
ELECTRIC LAST-MILE
-42%
CO₂ / PARCEL VS 2019
100%
RENEWABLE HUBS
Sustainability stories
NEXT STEP
Fly with us.
Whether you ship, build or drive — there’s a seat on this migration.