HAMBURG/KOPENHAGEN (dpa-AFX) - Danish shipping company Maersk has reported slumps in sales and profits at the start of the new year. Sales fell 26 percent to $14.2 billion (about 12.8 billion euros) in the first quarter. Earnings before interest and taxes (Ebit) shrank by more than two-thirds to 2.3 billion dollars, A. P. Møller-Mærsk announced in Copenhagen on Thursday. The background is the normalization of supply chains on the world's oceans, which have been in turmoil for years, and the decline in demand for sea transport.

"The visibility of how the situation will develop further remains low for the rest of the year," said the head of the world's second-largest container shipping company, Vincent Clerc. He announced plans to counter market normalization with "proactive cost management."

Huge dislocations in global supply chains had made container shipping companies winners in the Corona pandemic. Tight capacity had caused prices for ocean shipments to keep rising after many crisis years of price wars, overcapacity and red figures.

Maersk's Hamburg-based rival Hapag-Lloyd, which crossed the finish line in Germany in 2022 as one of the most profitable companies among those listed on the stock exchange, had already raised the prospect that its 2023 profit would be less than a quarter of its record 2022 profit. The Hamburg-based company will present figures for the first quarter next Thursday.

Maersk and its main rival MSC are by far the largest container shipping companies in the world. In order to become less dependent on developments on the oceans, the Danes have for some time been developing into a more complex logistics company that aims to offer all services in the entire supply chain from a single source./kf/DP/zb