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REV: JUNE 1, 2012

FOREST L. REINHARDT
RAMON CASADESUS-MASANELL
FREDERIK NELLEMANN

Maersk Line and the Future of Container Shipping
There is a difference between just moving a container and moving it in the most sustainable, easy, and reliable way. And that difference is worth something to our customers.
— Morten Engelstoft, Chief Operating Officer, Maersk Line, 2012
It was a cold February afternoon in 2012 as Søren Skou looked out the window of his office across the Copenhagen waterfront. Skou had just recently been promoted to become CEO of Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping company, and the flagship company of the Danish conglomerate A.P. Moller-Maersk Group. He was taking the reins at a difficult time: the sluggish global economy had severely depressed container rates, while fuel prices were still at record levels.
On some trade routes, the company—like its competitors—wasn’t even meeting the costs of deploying its large and expensive container ships.
Skou was confident that the company would pull through. After all, it had recently completed a successful turnaround following the Maersk Line’s first ever annual loss in 2009 and the Group benefited from a diverse holding of activities, which included an oil and gas business. However, Skou needed to assess whether Maersk Line was headed in the right direction, both to be able to compete in this slower market but also once the economy, and global trade, picked up. In 2010 the company had decided to focus on three differentiators to help it maintain its position as the global leader: reliability, ease-of-doing business, and environmental performance.
Maersk Line had the ambition of becoming the sustainability leader in an industry that was often criticized for environmental impact, most notably the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from its heavy fuel use. It