A good year

Last year symbolised a new era for Maersk after the heavy losses the Group attained following the economy recession. Regional Chief Executive, Mr. Marc Gijsbrechts and Maersk Israel CEO, Mr. Steve Felder talk about the end of Maersk’s crisis and the development in Israel’s economy
 
2010 was a good year for Maersk Line. The Group results are fairly strong with a full year estimate now of somewhere around $2.2 billion of profit after a loss of $2.5 billion last year. “You can imagine that the atmosphere is positive” says Regional Chief Executive, Mr. Marc Gijsbrechts “But I would like to say cautiously positive. Because we've gone through a fairly strong 2010. We don't want to be over optimistic or get complacent after what we've seen in 2010”.
 
Maersk's results were outstanding in compare with other ocean carriers. “The reason for the strong figures, is the fact that in 2007, when we noticed that while a lot of the other carriers were turning in fairly good results, we were struggling to bring in good results. And then we introduced what we call our streamline strategy. And I believe that has helped us a lot, because that was in end 2007-2008, actually well before the major crisis. And we were already a year into changing the organization, taking out a lot of costs, when the crisis hit us. We've taken out somewhere between $2-3 billion in costs. We've taken out huge amounts in the fuel consumption. Slow steaming, of course, has helped us to reduce our costs.” says Gijsbrechts.
 
Maersk Israel CEO, Mr. Steve Felder, had to cope with the financial recession when he entered the position in 2009. Felder is very impressed with the growth of the Israeli economy and Israel joining the OECD. “I think Israel's always been quite an interesting growth market, because it's somewhere in between a developed market and an emerging market. What was very interesting, and I think encouraging about the Israeli market is the strength that it showed during the crisis. Because with only two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the turnaround was much quicker than the rest of the world.”.
 
This is something that the Maersk Line takes under consideration when it comes to investing more services agrees Gijsbrechts: “During the crisis, when most of the carriers were struggling and where you saw little or no investments, we actually introduced three new services on the Israeli market: the EuroMed service, the ALEX services into the Adriatic, and we introduced the Russia service into Novorossiysk. Why? Because we saw a very interesting market that was growing and where Israel is an important player.”
 
“But we're always looking at different combinations and so forth” adds Felder “Can I say for sure that we're going to give new products next year? No. Are we looking at some interesting opportunities? Absolutely. On the reefers, globally we have an advantage, because we have a longstanding history and expertise in reefers. We're also at the leading edge of innovation in reefers. And then I think in Israel, we've proven to reefer customers that we deliver a good, reliable and a consistent service. So we will continue to look for new opportunities, new ideas to serve our customers better and at the same time be profitable.
 
The new Carmel Terminal in Haifa  that will be able to handle additional 1 million TEU's per year, allowing serving above 8000 TEU ships is another opportunity for investment says Felder “I think it's as great development. I think the piers that we're currently using in Haifa, there's going to be benefits. In terms of TOS and the system itself, I think that it's a very good step forward. It will help us with much better planning and communication, information flow for sure. And of course, we'll be able to hopefully, even improve the service that we provide to customers”.