A.P. Moeller-Maersk wants to invest in more Chinese ports and other business areas after agreeing to take a stake in the second phase of a $12 billion port in Shanghai, its chief executive said on Saturday.
Danish shipping group and oil group Maersk signed an agreement with Hutchison Whampoa Ltd in December to buy into Phase II of the Yangshan deepwater port near Shanghai, becoming the first international investor to join the container project.
Asked if Maersk was considering more investment in Chinese ports, chief executive Jess Soderberg said: "Yes, we would like to invest further in China but there isn't any specific that I can talk about at this time."
He declined to comment on how much the company might invest, but said that ports would be just one main area of interest.
Maersk was constantly in active discussions with potential Chinese partners, he said on the sidelines of the Boao Forum, an annual gathering of business and political leaders on Hainan island off China's south coast.
Soderberg said international freight rates, which have declined as shipping capacity has grown faster than demand, may have stabilised.
"Freight rates have dropped but they will come up again," he said. "It has been historically fluctuating and I think that this will continue also in the future," he said.
If the market volume was as strong as he expected, it was possible freight rates could rise again from as early as this year, he said, adding that it was hard to predict market trends with any certainty.
Maersk operates the world's largest container shipping line and Morgan Stanley this month initiated coverage of the company's shares with an "underweight" rating, reflecting weakness in container rates that the brokerage expects in the next 12 to 18 months.
Soderberg said the recent decline in freight rates was not too much of a concern for the company. "We have gotten used to these fluctuations so we will take it as it comes," he said.
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