Maersk Plans Major Changes on Trans-Atlantic

Maersk Line is making some major changes in its trans-Atlantic services. The world’s largest ocean container carrier will begin notifying customers in October of the rates and services it is planning for the trade over the next 12 months.

It has already notified customers that it is changing the interval of adjustments in its bunker surcharges to monthly from quarterly as of Oct. 1, and it is planning to reduce capacity on at least one of its services by using smaller ships.

Maersk is able to make these changes because carriers have cut so much capacity out of the trade in the last two or three months and are likely to continue, said Soren Castbak, senior director of the trans-Atlantic trade for Maersk Line in Copenhagen. He said vessel capacity has been cut by 19 percent on the services between North Europe and North Atlantic ports, by 20 percent on services between South Europe and U.S. South Atlantic ports and by 30 percent on services between North Europe and Canada. “This is new on the Atlantic, because when you look years back, when has anyone ever taken capacity out of the Transatlantic?”

Maersk will begin notifying customers of the rate increases it plans over the next 12 months by mid-October, or possibly earlier, so that they can factor them into their 2010 budgets and will notify them of its planned service coverage by the end of October. "This has never been done before," Castbak said. The rate increases on the trans-Atlantic trades that Maersk implemented on Sept. 1 and Oct. 1 “have got traction,” he said. “This is telling me that we have seen the bottom on the Atlantic.

Maersk decided to switch making adjustment in its bunker surcharge to a monthly BAF as of Oct. 1 because "we weren’t always able to get compensation when we changed it quarterly," Castbak said.

Maersk Line plans to reduce capacity on the four vessels it deploys on the five-vessel WestMed service it operates with CMA CGM from South Europe to the U.S. South Atlantic after the current peak season by replacing its four 4,000-TEU ships with four 2,900-TEU ships. Castbak said he expects other carriers that have not yet cut capacity will do so and that Maersk Line is “looking" at the possibility of further cuts.

Contact Peter T. Leach at pleach@joc.com.