Maersk CEO Soren Skou claims that autonomous container vessels won't happen in his life time

Self-sailing container vessels won't generate significant cost efficiencies, even if regulators allow them, claims Skou

Maersk CEO Soren Skou has come out against autonomous cargo vessels, suggesting that they won't become operational within his life time, pointing out that the economic value would be small.

Maersk is the world's largest container ship and supply vessel operator, with around 88,000 employees across 130 countries. The shipping industry has already reduced the number of people it has working on its vessels as a result of developments in automation. But Skou believes that the workforce has now hit a floor and that there's no more room to remove people from working on container ships.

"Even if technology advances, I don't expect we will be allowed to sail around with 400-meter long container ships, weighing 200,000 tonnes without any human beings onboard," he told Bloomberg.

"I don't think it will be a driver of efficiency, not in my time," he added.

A combination of regulation and the relatively slim return on investment that it would generate will therefore inhibit the development of self-sailing vessels, according to Skou. Container vessels today, which may transport 10,000 or more containers per journey, are already staffed with a handful of crew.

Maersk will have carefully considered autonomous sailing technology as it has spent a lot of time improving its global container fleet and innovating in the field.

Last month, it formed a joint venture with IBM to develop the use of blockchain technology to manage and track cross-border trade, and it has also developed a self-sailing tug boat in its towage unit.

While ships have grown bigger, efficiency and automation have enabled cargo companies to restrict crew sizes: Maersk employs less than half as many sailors to transport a container as it did two decades ago, partly due to increasing ship sizes capable of taking ever-more containers. But Skou is adamant that fully automated vessels are not part of the company's strategy.

There is also security to consider, not just piracy in areas such as off the coast of Somalia and Yemen, but also IT security. Maersk was particularly hard hit by the Russian-sourced NotPetya malware outbreak last year, which caused an estimated $300m of damage to the company's IT systems, many of which needed to be completely rebuilt.

Rolls Royce's marine unit, which is considered a leader in developing self-sailing technologies, remains unprofitable, though. This is even after a restructuring which saw the unit cut 4,200 jobs. The company was put up for sale last month.