1966: a critical year

In 1966 Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller and the Maersk Line management embarked on the journey towards containerisation. Maersk Line had been in the deep-sea liner business for nearly 40 years and was well established in the Pacific, considered one of the larger trades together with the other east–west trades of the Atlantic Ocean and Europe–Asia, as well as several regional trades, primarily in Southeast Asia. However, their competitors had already made the crucial decision to introduce new services, transporting standardised containers. Maersk Line decided in favour of an alternative to the standard container, and it would take nearly a decade for the company to launch its first fully containerised service. On the troublesome way, Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller and the Maersk organisation would mature and grow into a modern and even more internationally oriented business.

In the mid 1960s, the world was changing rapidly: the global population had increased by one-third in less than two decades and now numbered around 3.3 billion. Trades in Maersk Line’s main markets in North America and Asia increased dramatically in the same period. The United States’ international trade rose from $19.4 billion to $50.3 billion and Japan’s from $1.7 billion to $15.8 billion. Only a limited number of people in and around the shipping industry had the vision to see the opportunities offered by the standard container for facilitating and expanding this trade. The industry would go through significant changes, and indeed itself become a major driver for changing the world as commodities were moved from break-bulk into containers.