By Brenda Goh

SHANGHAI, Sept 26 (Reuters)– For Captain Dick S. Danielsen, the youth desire has actually been to cruise the globe’s largest ships.

The Danish seafarer obtained his opportunity 3 years earlier when he was asked to helm the Majestic Maersk, a monstrous, child blue-painted vessel that at 400 meters (1,312 feet) is longer than a nuclear-powered warship. The ship can stand up to 18,270 twenty-foot (TEU) delivery containers and also is possessed by the globe’s biggest container delivery company, A.P. Moller-Maersk

“If you’re going to be a captain and the company asks you, do you want to be on our biggest ship in the fleet, everybody would be proud. If they don’t, then I think they’re lying,” he informed Reuters from his ship throughout a 24 hour-long drop in Shanghai’s port last Saturday.

Danielsen’s desires mirror the larger vision of his market, whose companies remain in the middle of a costs spree throughout the last couple of years to develop the largest ships.

While hailed as design tasks, these mega-ships are currently being criticized for adding to the overcapacity excess pestering the container market, which saw its very first significant casualty with the August collapse of South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping.

The Triple- E course mega-ships purchased by Maersk’s container arm in 2011 were practically 20 percent bigger than the largest vessels at the time and also the economic climates of range reduced delivery prices by as much as 30 percent.

But capability development outmatched profession, damaging products prices and also business revenues. As of this springtime, 7.4 percent of container ships worldwide have actually been still, according to delivering market information company Alphaliner.

The Majestic Maersk is no more also amongst the leading 10 of the globe’s biggest ships, surpassed by vessels possessed by Switzerland’s Mediterranean Shipping Co, China COSCO Holdings and also theUnited Arab Shipping Co There are 45 vessels that can rollover 18,000 TEU presently cruising and also an additional 76 are being constructed, with the biggest able to lug 21,000 TEU, according to assessment company VesselsValue.

“This is a crisis that is self-inflicted by the sector,” claimed Olaf Merk, ports and also delivery manager at the International Transport Forum, a brain trust that becomes part of the Organisation for Economic Co- procedure and alsoDevelopment “It’s become a competition about who has the largest (ships)… The fact is that they cannot fill the ships.”

Akin to drifting stockrooms that can suit heaps of containers as much as 22-feet (6.7 meters) high, these big ships trawl the delivery courses in between Asia and also Europe, delivering products from playthings to red wine. The Majestic Maersk also has its very own movie theater and also fitness center.

Maersk’s Danielsen claimed he did not believe firms would certainly quit constructing bigger ships in spite of the overcapacity presently.

“I am confident that before I get retired I will be on a ship that is 450-500 metres long.”

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

( c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016.