Maersk Line beefs up reefer fleet

The Danish container carrier ordered 14,800 new refrigerated cargo containers, lowering the average age of its reefer equipment fleet to 7.9 years old, well below the industry average, the company said in a statement.    Maersk Line is beefing up its refrigerated container (reefer) fleet with 14,800 new refrigerated cargo containers, the company said in a statement.
   Financial terms of the order were not disclosed, but the ocean carrier subsidiary of Denmark’s A.P. Møller-Maersk Group said the purchase, along with the 30,000 reefers the company acquired in 2015, will lower the average age of its reefer equipment fleet to 7.9 years old. This is well below the industry average of 12 years old, according to London-based maritime consultant Drewry.
   The investment comes on the heels of an order by competitor Hapag-Lloyd for 5,750 reefer containers earlier this month, a signal the industry sees perishable and cold chain cargo services as an expanding market.
   The new reefers feature built-in Remote Container Management (RCM) technology, which connects each container digitally and provides enhanced cargo visibility across Maersk Line’s entire reefer fleet, the company said.
   Maersk Line Head of Reefer Management Shereen Zarkani said the investment will allow Maersk to offer enhanced services and increased transparency for shippers of perishable products.
   Speaking to the industry at Cool Logistics in Bremen, Germany, Zarkani said the RCM technology went live last year, and Maersk plans to give customers access to it some time in 2017.
   “Reefer visibility only makes sense if applied to the entire fleet. So with more than 270,000 reefers in operation, it has been a massive undertaking to get to where we are today,” said Zarkani. “Since we launched RCM in 2015, we matured our internal processes and gained operational experience in handling the data. We have now entered the next stage and will be ready to offer this enhanced data visibility to our customers in the coming year.”