Eivind Kolding, chief executive officer of Maersk Line, expects the 2008 container shipping market to be similar to 2007 with healthy growth in all bar the U.S. trades.
Kolding, speaking during a presentation of Maersk's new Streamline business strategy on Tuesday, said the slowing U.S. economy is a major problem not only for the Danish mega-carrier but for the entire container shipping industry, although his company limited the impact by cutting back its U.S. capacity at the end of 2006.
"We saw it coming a year ago and reduced our U.S. network and inland corridors quite significantly in order to cut costs and better face the slowdown that we are seeing right now," he said.
"We believe that we have made the necessary steps to regain profitability in the U.S. trades. We could still do a lot better in terms of utilization, which is a general focus of Streamline, and there are other things we could do operationally."
Maersk, along with most of its competitors, have in recent months once again reduced tonnage in the Asia/North America trade as demand for goods made in the Far East declines due to the softening U.S. economy. The latest World Liner Supply report of American Shipper's sister company ComPair Data reveals that the Asia to North Europe/Mediterranean trade has for the first time ever overtaken the transpacific as the world's biggest deep-sea trade in terms of container vessel capacity.
"We think we are sized right at this point in time for the U.S. market," Kolding said. "Our best view is that there will be no growth to a very slow growth in the U.S. next year. If there will be a decline, we are not so sure of that.
"It is troublesome, but as a global business we do see that the trade between Asia and Europe has grown close to 20 percent in 2007, so you lose some and you win some."
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