Maersk drops its fleet cap as the container orderbook hits a 2008 high

Maersk is ordering 26 container ships of 18,600 TEU each, for delivery in 2029 and 2030, after two years of telling the market it would hold its fleet at about 4.3 million TEU. The company confirmed the order to Maritime Executive and called it fleet renewal.

The order adds about 484,000 TEU to a fleet that has already grown to 4.74 million TEU, per Alphaliner. So Maersk’s cap was gone before it ordered these 26 ships. They take it far past the old ceiling. Linerlytica, which traced the order to Hengli Heavy Industry and New Times Shipyard in China, called it Maersk’s first break from its integrator strategy.

In the same week, CMA CGM was reported to have placed 12 ships of 24,000 TEU at Jiangsu Yangzijiang, also for 2029 and 2030. CMA CGM has not confirmed it. Together, the two orders pushed the global orderbook past 45% of the operating fleet, Linerlytica said this week. The ratio was last that high in late 2008.

A North American importer signing 2027 ocean contracts is buying into the gap between two dates. Spot rates from Asia to the US East Coast sat at $11,259 per FEU in mid-September, per Xeneta, within 11% of the pandemic record, because Cape routing and the Gulf war have absorbed ships. The tonnage ordered this month arrives in 2028 through 2030, when BIMCO already has supply growing faster than demand.

Buyers answer that gap with contract length and rate structure, not with carrier choice. A fixed 12-month rate signed at today’s level holds as long as the shock holds. It becomes a liability the quarter the Red Sea reopens, which BIMCO, Drewry and Xeneta all name as the swing factor. BIMCO puts a full return to Suez at a 10% cut in ship demand.

The orderbook has doubled in three years, with the buying concentrated in the six largest lines.

The last time the ratio crossed 45%, in 2008, the ships were delivered into the 2009 recession. Hanjin, then the seventh-largest carrier, filed for receivership in August 2016. Rates hit a record low that same year. The comparison is not exact, because this orderbook is spread out to 2030 and dual-fuel engines let carriers call it replacement tonnage. But replacement needs scrapping, which is running at a 20-year low.

Shippers have been through this exact gap once before. When spot fell below 2022-vintage contracts in 2023, 77% of cargo owners and forwarders renegotiated live contracts, per a Freightos survey reported by Sourcing Journal. Of those, 52% renegotiated more than once a quarter. Those contracts had been signed when Shanghai to Los Angeles spot was above $10,000 per FEU.

The renegotiations changed how the next contracts were written. GoComet’s Gautam Jain told the same outlet that two of his clients had moved to monthly spot buying or three-month contracts. A transatlantic shipper at TPM described the same shift, from annual to rolling quarterly deals.

The same tools are being reached for now. Xeneta reported in August that long-term contract rates were up 41% to 53% across four trades since February and advised shippers to shorten to quarterly deals. Index-linked contracts, where the rate moves with a published index each month instead of fixing for the term, remove the renegotiation step altogether. Transpacific talks for 2027 do not start in earnest until the first quarter.

The carriers ordering these ships know there is no overcapacity today. Linerlytica’s own note says the current vessel shortage is pushing freight, charter and secondhand prices to year-to-date highs, which “has ironically made current newbuilding prices appear low by comparison.” Carriers are buying because ships are cheap against the market they are in, not because yards are discounting.

The 2023 shock complicates that comfort. The orderbook was already a record that year, but rates still rose 130% between November 2023 and March 2024, because about 700 ships went round the Cape, per UNCTAD. A shock absorbed a record delivery wave once before, which is what the Gulf is doing now.

Not every carrier is in on the buying: HMM paused at least 10 13,000-TEU ships in July, saying market uncertainties would grow “due to increased vessel capacity from newbuild deliveries,” and put more than $1 billion into tankers and gas carriers instead. Hapag-Lloyd’s most recent order was feeder ships under 5,000 TEU. Two of the top 10 read the same ratio and stayed out of the megaship race.

Carriers offered 6% to 7% more capacity into the US East Coast in September than in August, Xeneta reported last week. They are “seizing the opportunity while the market is hot,” chief analyst Peter Sand said, ahead of “what could be a turn in the market within the next two to three weeks.” If East Coast spot falls as the Golden Week blanks lift, the priciest transpacific lane will have shown how fast it reprices when capacity, not shortage, sets the rate.

Those same hulls carry a second risk, because the US suspension of Section 301 fees on Chinese-built ships expires on November 10, and USTR has said only that it will decide before then. Every megaship in this month’s orders is going to a Chinese yard. The carriers ordered them without knowing whether those ships will pay to call US ports in 2029.

BIMCO’s own forecast already carries the third test: a full return to Suez routing cuts ship demand by about 10%, whenever it comes. That cut lands on a supply picture BIMCO already has growing faster than demand. A contract fixed at today’s rate stops being a hedge that day.