The Danish shipping giant Maersk Line is having trouble loading up its new Triple-E mega container ships to capacity because only two docks in Asia have the necessary infrastructure to do so.

The world’s largest ships will have to wait until the end of 2014 to begin to sail with full shipments as central European harbours are still unable to handle fully loading the 18,270-container-capacity ships.

“Right now there are only two harbours in our network, Yantian and Tanjung Pelepas, that can handle fully loading Triple-E ships,” Thomas Riber Knudsen, the head of Maersk Line’s Asia and Pacific region, told Lloyd’s List. “At the moment we are only able to load about 16,000 containers on the ships.”

Rotterdam blues

Knudsen went on to say that it was important for some of the large harbours – such as those in Algeciras, Shanghai and Rotterdam – to be able to handle the ships.

Maersk Line currently has seven Triple-E ships transporting containers between Asia and Northern Europe. They are expected to gradually take over from smaller ships on important routes.