AP Moller-Maersk to Buy Royal P&O Nedlloyd

Published May 12, 2005 12:01 AM by The Maritime Executive

The owner of Maersk Sealand, the world's largest container shipping company, says the industry needs to consolidate and build more ships in order to grow.

Mearsk has a 12% market share of global container shipping and owns approximately 400 ships and 750,000 containers. The Maersk Group also owns oil wells in the North Sea, an airline, shipyards, and a chain of supermarkets. The company is run by 91-year old Maersk McKinney Moeller, who still actively manages one of Europe's biggest business organizations, AP Moller Maersk.

On the other hand, the once vibrant British owned P&O has steadily transitioned downward. It merged its container division with Dutch based Nedlloyd some years ago (still retains 25%), and it sold its P&O Princess cruise business to Carnival. The company only owns its container terminal business and the remnants of the Townsend Thoresen Cross-Channel ferry operations. P&O Nedlloyd has 156 vessels and 428,000 containers.