MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Maersk Line increasingly serving Latin America to tap growing trade

Maersk Line Chief Eivind Kolding

The world's biggest container shipper, Maersk Line, is increasingly serving Latin America and Africa with ships sailing directly from Asia to tap accelerating growth in those markets, the Financial Times said.

Many of the ships that Maersk Line -- part of Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk -- has on order over the next two years are designed to meet growing African and Latin American demand, Maersk Line chief Eivind Kolding was quoted as saying in the paper's Monday edition.

“The tonnage that we have on order and will get delivered over the next two years is very much suited for the South America and Africa market, so that's the direction that we already are moving,” Kolding said, according to the FT.

The global shipping industry is recovering this year from a disastrous 2009 when the Maersk group suffered its first loss. There are signs that the pace of recovery is slowing, the FT said.

“It's really the west and the old economies that have a growth issue,” Kolding said. “It's not the rest of the world.”

The fast emerging market growth could reduce the importance of such hubs as Algeciras in Spain and Salalah in Oman where Maersk's Asia-Europe services collect and discharge many containers going to and coming from Africa, the FT said.

In the short run, Maersk Line would idle some ships to meet slowing demand, it said. “There will simply be too much capacity in the market, so our response is that we take out some capacity from the start of October,” Kolding said, according to the FT.