Peter T. Leach, Senior Editor | Apr 19, 2012 9:25AM EDT
Maersk Line plans to duplicate its Asia-Europe Daily Maersk service on other global trade lanes in future, but it is not yet ready to announce them, according to Lucas Vos, the carrier’s chief operating officer.
“It shows that it’s possible to get the reliability up to 98 percent on that trade lane," Vos said at Containerisation International’s 14th annual Liner Shipping Conference in London on Wednesday. Average reliability on the trade is only 69 percent according to Drewry, he said. Maersk plans to raise its reliability to 99 percent by the end of 2012 on the trades between Europe and Asia and Europe and South America. Vos said the new service achieved a record of 99 percent reliability in February this year.
Vos said the service, which was launched last October by combining 68 vessels into a single-six-days-a-week string, is an example of the kinds of changes the current management is trying to make.
“Maersk was not well run for a long time and was not providing value to our shareholders,” he said. “It feels like we lost our way since the 1990s by trying to price our competitors out of the business and not listening to our customers.”
In the wake of the launch of Daily Maersk last fall, other Asia-Europe carriers have begun to compete on reliability as well by combining their services.
Since the launch of the service, Maersk Line has raised its share of the Asia-Europe trade to 25 percent from 21 percent. “Customer satisfaction is at an all-time high, at 6.1 on a scale of 7,” he said. Maersk was forced to regain the market share it had lost to other Asia-Europe carriers that slashed their rates last year, he said. “We didn’t take the lead in cutting rates,” Vos said.
Contact Peter T. Leach at pleach@joc.com. Follow him on Twitter @petertleach.
