Maersk Line: No Plans To Exercise 3rd Triple-E Tranche Option

COPENHAGEN (Dow Jones)–Danish Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping company, has no intention of exercising an option that would bring its total number of ordered Triple-E vessels to 30, a senior executive said Monday.

“We have until year-end to decide whether we will exercise the remaining option for the last ten vessels, but at the moment we have no plans to do so,” Chief Operating Officer Morten Engelstoft told Dow Jones Newswires.

Engelstoft confirmed that Maersk Line, a unit of Danish industrial conglomerate A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S (MAERSK-B.KO), has now ordered the second tranche of 10 Triple-E vessels from manufacturer Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co. Ltd. (042660.SE), bringing the total number of ordered ships to 20, “a number that fits the capacity needs.”

“It’s good to have the option open, but I don’t expect that our estimated capacity needs will have changed substantially by year-end, and this would mean we won’t exercise the option,” Engelstoft said.

With a price tag of $190 million each, a length of 400 meters and a transport capacity of 18,000 twenty-foot containers, the Triple-E vessels are the biggest container ships ever built. Maersk has ordered the ships for its routes between Asia and Europe.

The 20 ships ordered are due for delivery between 2013-2015.

-By Flemming Emil Hansen, Copenhagen Bureau, Dow Jones Newswires