COPENHAGEN - Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping company, said on Tuesday it has struck a $1.8 billion deal for 11 new ultra-large vessels from South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co Ltd . The vessels will be the so-called second generation of Maersk’s Triple-E ships, once the largest in the world, with a capacity of carrying 19,630 units of twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) containers. The deal also gives Maersk Line the option to order a further six new vessels. The shipyard said on May 11 it was in talks with Maersk Line for a potential order. The new vessels will be the largest in Maersk Line’s fleet and are intended for routes between Asia and Europe. They will replace smaller, less efficient vessels, from its fleet of over 600 ships, the company said. The 11 new vessels will join Maersk Line’s fleet between April 2017 and May 2018 and they will sail under Danish flag. The order was placed despite freight rates hitting multi-year lows due to overcapacity in the industry. But big shipping companies are ordering increasingly larger vessels to supersede smaller ones, which will make their fleets more efficient while keeping up with the modest growth in global trade in the coming years. Maersk Line plans to spend $15 billion in new orders, retrofits, containers and equipment in the next five years. This is the second new-build order in that investment programme, following the seven 3,600 TEU feeder vessels announced earlier this year. “Maersk Line will thus be able to maintain the necessary capacity to grow with global demand as well as replace less efficient tonnage,” it said in the statement. Maersk Line ordered 20 of the first generation Triple-E vessels also from Daewoo, with deliveries beginning in July 2013 and the final one due this month.