Maersk CEO: We Need to Order Less Ships

Making money by investing into ships on speculation is limited, despite the fact that prices of ships are pretty low, Nils Smedegaard Andersen, Chief Executive Officer, A.P. Møller-Mærsk said yesterday in a keynote speech at Danish Maritime Days taking place in Copenhagen.

As explained by Andersen, “ownership is a minus game” because apart of the price there are several other factors to consider when investing in new ships.

“The chances are that if you buy a ship today it will cost you the financial cost, coupled with depreciation risk of technological innovation, making it obsolete. What is more, it will cost you quite a lot to stick with that ship for a while. This risk is hugely underestimated,” Andersen said.

Maersk CEO said that their practice was to buy ships the company needs as late as possible, thus running less risk.

One of the discussion topics of the forum was: Why shipping is not an attractive industry per se?

Andersen said that blaming overcapacity, over-financing and too little scrapping was a very simplistic way of putting it. However, “ordering a little less and looking a bit further in the future, focussing much more on market leads” would be a way forward for the industry.

Speaking of the future of the workforce, Maersk CEO referred to a good initiative in Denmark which saw establishment of a university study of marine transportation technology and management.

“Making sure you have a pipeline of well educated people is absolutely feasible,” he said, adding that Maersk has had various education programmes so far for both high-school and university level attendees.

“We have to be ready for the employees of tomorrow as they will ask more of us than just a salary.

They want a vision. They want to know why are they there and feel a part of something that will change the world for the better,” he concluded.

The Danish Maritime Forum opened its doors yesterday morning.

The forum included group sessions, deep dives and panel discussions during which the participants were asked to come up with concrete ideas to solutions to the upcoming challenges for the industry.