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Displaying items by tag: Profits Up

The world’s largest container shipping line, Maersk, saw profits spike during second quarter pandemic lockdowns as declining volumes were offset by higher freight rates and reduced operating costs.

Parent company A.P. Moller-Maersk (APMM), writes LloydsLoadingList, reported improved profitability across all businesses during Q2. APMM attributed its success to “agile capacity deployment, cost mitigation initiatives and adaption to changed customer needs, with higher ocean freight rates and lower fuel costs helping mitigate the decline in ocean volumes.

Maersk reported that East-West volumes fell 14.9% year-on-year in the second quarter but this was offset by average freight rates on the services rising 8.2%. And, while loaded volumes on North-South services dropped 18.6% in the period, average freight rates increased 5.2%.

Total ocean operating costs decreased by 16% to $5.2 billion in Q2, driven by lower network costs including bunker and time charter costs, reported APMM, with “active capacity management in response to the lower global demand partly offsetting the impact of lower volumes”.

Overall group revenue decreased by 6.5% year-on-year in Q2 to $9.6 billion, mainly driven by a volume decrease of 16% in ocean loadings and a 14% drop in handling at its gateway terminals.

For further analysis click here of the giant container operator. 

Published in Ports & Shipping

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.