Around a quarter of the additional capacity is surplus to carriers' requirements, which has boosted the idle fleet of ships over 500 TEUs to 810,000 TEUs, 5 percent of the total fleet, at the beginning of 2013, from 595,000 TEUs a year ago.

Shipyards delivered 207 ships with 1.26 million TEUs of capacity in 2012, and 200 vessels totaling 351,000 TEUs were scrapped or lost. An additional 18,000 TEUs joined the fleet, mainly because of Maersk Line's boosting the capacity of its 8,200 to 8,600-TEU S-class ships to around 9,600 TEUs.

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