Box woe ahead

Denmark’s Maersk Line has warned that the outlook for containership rates this year is “extremely negative.”

The forecast came as the parent AP Moller-Maersk group announced container shipping profit of $205m for 2008, despite the downturn in the second half, compared to $106m in 2007. Revenues rose 13% to $28.66bn.

But it said the container market had seen an unprecedented drop in transported volumes as the economic crisis took a grip, with January 2009 business plunging 20% year-on-year.

Overall development for 2009 is expected to be negative.

As new tonnage enters the market, this lack of demand has pushed earnings so low as to barely cover variable costs, it said.

Lay-ups meant a total of 40,000 feu was taken out of the market in the second half.

Maersk itself closed two routes, cutting capacity by 5,800 feu per week, and eight 6,500-teu ships were taken out of service in November.

Maersk Line has 464 container vessels with a total capacity of 1.9m teu.

2008’s global container shipping growth was 5%, against 9% in 2007, it said.

Asia-Europe trades were up before the financial crisis hit, but transpacific business fell marginally.

Overall, rates increased by an average of 8% due to a bunker adjustment charge, as well as a rise in vessel-sharing deals.

Volumes were little changed at 6.2m teu.

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