Americas News
Maersk Line: 25,000 TEU Vessels Are Possible, but Won't be Practical Anytime Soon
Maersk Line CEO Soren Skou this week said in an interview at the Trans-Pacific Marine conference in Long Beach, U.S., that ships with capacities of 25,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) are possible but will not be practical in the foreseeable future, JOC reports.
From a design point of view, nothing is stopping the advent of ships 25 percent larger than the world's current highest capacity vessels, he said.
"But with the kind of market growth we're seeing, I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon."
Such large ships are of limited utility, said Skou, and are only compatible on high volume Europe-Asia routes with very large ports at either end.
Skou said that Maersk, as Asia's biggest box shipper and with 22 percent of the Northern Europe market transported 55,000 TEU per week.
If it deployed 25,000 TEU ships on this route it would only have enough traffic for two strings, whereas it needs to offer five or six sailings per week to remain competitive on the route.
Comparing Maersk's 18,000 TEU Triple E carriers to Boeing 747 aeroplanes, Skou said those aircraft spent decades as the world's largest because they offered "the optimal balance between economics and trading flexibility."
"That's where we think the 18,000 TEU ships are."
In addition to striking that balance, Skou said port productivity has not kept pace with the growth in ship size.
Since 2007, the average ship size on Europe-Asia routes has doubled to 13,000-14,000 TEU but port productivity has only increased 50 percent, meaning ships spend on average 18 days in port rather than 12.
Maersk Line expects to spend $3 million on new ships to keep up with projected demand growth.
Last week, the company confirmed plans to order 11 more Triple E ships in the second quarter of 2015 (Q2).
