Maersk to raise shipping rates

Following a cut in prices last year, Danish company AP Moller-Maersk A/S – the world’s largest container ship owner – plans to increase its rates by as much as 15% in 2007 in order to offset higher costs. According to an article in ’Maritime Press Clippings’€™, the company is proposing to push up rates by 3-8% on routes between Asia and West Africa, and from 10 to 15% on cargo shipments from Europe to the Oceania region.
Maersk expects its container business to report a loss of US$ 600 million for 2006 compared to a profit of US$ 1.3 billion a year earlier. This decline is blamed not only on higher fuel costs, but also on the advent of new vessels which boosted competition among shipping companies and enabled clients to obtain lower rates.
In the three months ending in September last year, rates between West Coast USA and Asia and between Europe and Asia fell by, respectively, 8 and 16%, according to Containerisation International magazine.
The company says that, this year, it will raise rates for shipments from Europe to the Oceania region by US$ 600 per TEU (20-foot container equivalent units). By early December, the company had already announced increases of US$ 400 and US$ 500 per TEU on routed between Asia and Western Africa.