In view of declining demand on the Asia-Europe trade, Maersk Line is further reducing capacity by removing the AE5 service permanently and suspending the AE9 service until early December 2012.
Maersk Line will continue to provide customers with a broad and competitive range of services on this trade, stressed an official release.
"We do not expect volume growth on the Asia-Europe trades this year so there is currently no need for the number of ships sailing", says Mr Vincent Clerc, Chief Trade and Marketing Officer for Maersk Line.
"We expect a 3 per cent slump on the Asia-Europe container trades for 2012 and are taking steps to adjust to this without reducing our market position".
"Further to the 9 per cent capacity reductions we made earlier this year, this brings the total capacity reduction in 2012 on Maersk Line's Asia-Europe network to 21 per cent".
The Maersk Line AE5 service, which currently operates 8 vessels of 6,500 TEUs nominal capacity, will be closed with the last sailing departing Tanjung Pelepas on November 8, 2012.
The AE9 service's 11 vessels with 8,000 TEUs nominal capacity will be suspended immediately until early December 2012.
The capacity reduction will not affect Maersk Line's flagship product, Daily Maersk. In a recent survey conducted by Maersk Line, 42 per cent of Daily Maersk customers saved money on logistics as a result of the added benefits of absolute reliability and transportation time the product delivers. The Daily Maersk promise will be kept intact, supported by Maersk Line's reliable hub port set-up, the release emphasised.
Total trade volume has declined and the outlook for the economies of Europe and Asia remains weak, it pointed out.
Where commercially appropriate, Maersk Line intends considering additional opportunities to reduce capacity and look for slow-steaming opportunities.
