Maersk to stop ordering new vessels and focus instead on acquisitions

Copenhagen

THE owner of the world's largest container shipping line will stop ordering newly built vessels and instead pursue takeovers in an industry that has been plagued by overcapacity for almost a decade.

AP Moeller-Maersk A/S, whose Maersk Line unit has repeatedly broken the world records it has regularly set in mega-container ships developed with Asian ship yards, "is done with ordering new steel", chairman Michael Pram Rasmussen, said at the company's Copenhagen headquarters.