Initially SMN, KRL and VNS were managed out of Rijswijk, while KJCPL remained a separate business unit run from their office in Hong Kong.

Within the Dutch East Indies, inter-island services were provided by the Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (KPM), founded in Amsterdam in 1888 and with the operational head office in Batavia, now known as Jakarta.

These shipping services to the Dutch East Indies were complemented by the Java-China Japan Lijn (JCJL), founded in Amsterdam in 1902 and with the operational head office in Hong Kong, where P.J.

To ensure independence and to provide protection against involuntary take-overs by competitors, SMN, KRL and KPM formed a cartel under the name NV Nederlandsche Scheepvaart Unie in 1908, which also meant that the individual shipping companies were restricted to their agreed trading areas.

From 1948 onward the co-operation between KRL and SMN extended to other geographical areas under the acronym Nedlloyd Lines (NLL); their services to the Dutch East Indies resumed, along with those by KPM and JCJL.

Some trade with Indonesia remained possible until 1960; thereafter Dutch vessels were no longer allowed to ply in Indonesian waters, resulting in the majority of the inter-island KPM fleet partly being laid up at Singapore.

Also in the post-WWII period, the Verenigde Nederlandse Scheepvaartmaatschappij (VNS) was formed and jointly owned by SMN, KRL, Holland Amerika Lijn, Van Ommeren and KNSM.

For that reason KNSM had taken over a number of transportation businesses, including the Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd (founded in 1908), well known for its passenger vessels plying between Amsterdam and South America with mainly Eastern European emigrants after World War I.

Having concluded the giant merger which took about ten years, and with the total rationalisation of Nedlloyd's shipping activities, a separate problem surfaced – coping with strong-headed management and decades-old cultures.

As from 1990 Nedlloyd was facing a financial disaster and was forced to cash in by selling most of its non-shipping assets, and for the first time in its long history, banks were dictating the rules and pulling the strings.