Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping company, is under attack from its competitors for business on some of its most lucrative routes, Børsen reports.

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Tough competition and low income on the routes between Europe and Asia are driving some of the company’s competitors to challenge it for business on the so-called 'north-south', linking Africa to Europe, South America to the USA and Australasia to China.

Asia-Europe routes not profitable
”We’re being attacked. Our competitors have a lot of idle ships and are using them to encroach on the north-south routes,” Søren Skou, the head of Mærsk Line, told the paper.

“We will fight back and protect our business. We can exploit the fact that we are the biggest or the second-biggest line on these routes. We can use our size to push costs down. If we always have lower costs, we have something to defend ourselves with."

Børsen reports that, despite the massive volume of goods transported between Asia and Europe, these routes generate very little income for Maersk.

Maersk Line currently accounts  for 20 percent of the capacity on the north-south routes.