Maersk Line, operator of the world’s biggest container fleet, this week announced plans for a very big ship indeed. The Danish company has ordered, from a South Korean yard, 10 vessels bigger than aircraft carriers that will carry vast quantities of Chinese-made goods from Asia to Europe.
The missing party is the US, the country that not only invented the container shipping line industry in 1956, but is also the biggest national market for the iPods, shoes, car parts and foodstuffs that wend their way across the oceans from Shenzhen and Shanghai to Los Angeles. Yet the country that should, by heritage and size, be home to global shipping, is absent.
The two largest US-owned companies, Matson and Horizon Lines, occupy places 30 and 36 on Alphaliner’s table of container lines. Maersk, Mediterranean Shipping of Switzerland and CMA CGM Group of France are at the top, followed by others from Taiwan, Chile, Singapore, China, Japan, Germany and Korea. The US does better than that at World Cup soccer.