COPENHAGEN: Denmark’s Maersk Line, the world’s biggest container-shipping company by capacity, started talks with Asian shipbuilders to order up to 10 container megaships worth around $1.5 billion, reported The Wall Street Journal.
The ships would have a capacity to move around 20,000 containers each and that the order likely would be completed in the first quarter.
A spokesman for Maersk Line, a unit of conglomerate A.P. Møller-Mærsk A/S, declined to comment.
Container shipping, which carries about 95% of the world’s manufactured goods, has suffered for the past decade from overcapacity that has led to falling freight rates, which major operators have described as unsustainable. Dozens of smaller operators regularly undercut freight rates from Asia to Europe and across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, hoping to stay in business until the industry recovers.
