Denmark's Maersk Line expects to launch its first of 20 Triple-E, 18,000-TEU ships from Korea's Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering on the Asia-Europe service by mid-2014, according to the Shipping Gazette.
The first 18,000-TEUer will be on the AE-10 service, which now operates 15,500-TEU ships, reported Lloyd's Loading List. But Maersk is weighing how the Triple-E service will work without depressing rates with such a addition of capacity in the fragile Asia-Europe trade.
"We have not decided what the end game will be for Triple-E," said Maersk's Far East Asia liner cluster chief Brian Noe Kristensen. "We will need to do it in a market-sensitive way."
Maersk officials have repeatedly emphasised that the carrier will manage new deliveries carefully and will not expand capacity in Asia-Europe trades before market conditions recover.
Headhaul volumes on this route fell four per cent to 13.6 million TEU last year, according to Clarksons, though backhaul increased to 6.6 million TEU, up 4.7 per cent.
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