By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL | The New York Times | February 16, 2010
A view of loading operations from the bridge of the Eugen Maersk at Bremerhaven, Germany. (Image: Gordon Welters for The New York Times)
It took more than a month for the container ship Ebba Maersk to steam from Germany to Guangdong, China, where it unloaded cargo on a recent Friday — a week longer than it did two years ago.
But for the owner, the Danish shipping giant Maersk, that counts as progress.
In a global culture dominated by speed, from overnight package delivery to bullet trains to fast-cash withdrawals, the company has seized on a sales pitch that may startle some hard-driving corporate customers: Slow is better.
By halving its top cruising speed over the last two years, Maersk cut fuel consumption on major routes by as much as 30 percent, greatly reducing costs. But the company also achieved an equal cut in the ships’ emissions of greenhouse gases.
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