Nils Andersen, chief executive of AP Møller-Maersks, has warned that global trade will never return to scorching pre-crisis growth rates, in part because western companies are looking to manufacture more goods closer to home, says a report in the Financial Times.

The chief executive of the world’s biggest shipping group said that many of the world’s most important trade routes were suffering from a crippling over capacity because shipping lines were holding out in vain for the return of a pre-crisis golden era, which had been fuelled by spectacular growth in Asia and Latin America.

He sounded a cautiously optimistic tone about the company’s prospects in the face of falling oil prices. Those same price drops were helping the company’s own shipping costs, while also unlocking global demand for trade of goods, he said.

The global demand for containers should go up he said, adding that “there was still reason to expect growth in India.”

The more cautious outlook from the world's largest container shipping line by capacity, owned by Danish conglomerate AP Moller-Maersk, underscores the precarious state of the industry, which has been plagued by overcapacity and highly volatile freight rates in recent years.