Maersk's crystal ball gazing presents differing outlooks

DENMARK's Maersk Line, the world's largest container shipping company, presents differing views on the future of container trade in two separate Bloomberg reports from the same interview published within hours of each other.

The first Bloomberg story was headlined: "Maersk Line 'cautiously optimistic' on box demand in 2010." The second was headlined: "Maersk expects slowing demand to prompt decline in box capacity".

The second version of Maersk's crystal ball gazing came from the same source as the first - Tim Smith, chief executive officer of Maersk's north Asia region, in an interview with Bloomberg in Hong Kong.

In the second version, demand for shipments in "the fourth quarter might be a bit softer, and certainly after Chinese New Year it'll be quiet again. We need to be careful during those periods and maybe that's when it's time for us to take some capacity out."

In the first version, Mr Smith said: "Looking into 2011, we're cautiously optimistic, economies are going to continue improving but the pace is going to slow."

In the first version, Mr Smith expressed satisfaction that he saw rising demand with freight rates being "pretty much back to where we were" before the 2008 downturn.

Like many others, he saw China and India as the drivers of global trade in the coming years as disposable incomes and consumption increases in these countries.

"Imports will be a good focus for the next few years. Maybe it's going to be China's trade with the other emerging markets, like Africa or Latin America that we need to focus on," he said in the first version, he said in the first version.

"We just need to be as agile as we can and try and keep a close check on how demand and supply is keeping up," he said in the second.
(Source:www.schednet.com)