The world is in the midst of the large middle-class growth since post-World War II. With China's GDP expected to be larger than the United States by 2030, and India looking to surpass China in growth and GDP by the following decade, we are starting to see the shift shipping companies coming up with creative solutions to handle this consumer boom. The vast majority of them, like Maersk Line, are going with larger ships to handle the increased load; expected in the coming years. Take the ten Maersk Triple E Class shipping vessels, currently being built and in production.
The Triple E-Class ships on average contain 300,000 tons of cargo, and are beasts in the water that can deliver massive amounts of products to select ports around the world. Take the Maersk McKinney Moller for example, which is (at the moment) the largest container ship in the world. Remarkably, the McKinney Moller can carry over 18,000 containers by itself. If you wanted to, you fill the ship with enough shipping containers to transport more than 100 million pairs of shoes.
Berge Stahl is another behemoth. The Berge Stahl can only dock in a few select ports around the world, because of its weight. The ship carries ores from Brazil to Europe and China, and takes 35 hours to load the ship. Even more impressive is that every day seven trains with 204 containers and 4 locomotives are required to fill the container ship, on its monthly journey between Vitória in Port of Tubarão, and Europort in Rotterdam or Majishan in China.
With ships as large as these, the shipping world will easily be able to keep up with the pace of increasing demand in the coming years. The fact that Maersk Line is experiencing a huge surge in growth, is proof of the need for these super ships. With so many new mouths to feed over the next few years, it is no surprise that these ships are being built in bulk, to keep up with the rising consumer demand.
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