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"Container lines have already burnt-out most of the tricks for absorbing capacity," said Bjorn Vang Jensen, a Singapore- based sinfulness president at Electrolux who oversees about 1,50,000 shipments a year. "Some of these container ships are now so dumb that they're close to the speeds of the old sailing ships. The clippers might actually have been faster."
With options continuous out, investors in container-line stocks should brace themselves for losses. Still, shares in Copenhagen-based AP Moeller-Maersk, the the human race's biggest container line, may fall less than smaller competitors this year because its bigger ships are more charge-efficient, said Rikard Vabo, an analyst at Fearnley Fonds ASA in Oslo.
Gradual-steaming, pioneered by AP Moeller-Maersk's container unit, Maersk Underscore, helps carriers cut costs when times are tough. By sailing at humble speeds, ships need less fuel and can offset capacity stresses by using more vessels to score up for the longer sailing times.
With speeds unlikely to get any slower, the manufacture is growing more vulnerable to rising fuel costs, and all container lines are now losing wampum, according to BIMCO , the biggest international shipping association.
Source: Economic Times