As new slack season dawns in October, Maersk Line is pulling its Asia-Europe AE9 loop and replacing it with a string that is more seasonal, elastic and irregular in response to weak demand from Europe.

"We'll take out the AE9 service and bring in the seasonal string depending on demand. We have other overlap loops covering the AE9 ports," said Maersk Line's Asia Pacific chief Lars Jensen.

"So after the peak season in mid-September we'll stop AE9, but when demand is up again, maybe for Chinese New Year, we'll reintroduce it," he told Lloyd's List.

The demand for quality service has not been met by a willingness to pay extra. "We tried this with Daily Maersk, but we had to back off. Maybe Daily Maersk was a bit ahead of its time. Customers didn't want to pay for it. So we took it off the shelf.