COPENHAGEN—A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S’s shipping line, the world’s largest, will change the formula for calculating fuel surcharges for customers to help the unit recover more of the costs from recent oil price increases.

Maersk Line will calculate the so-called bunker adjustment factor in a different way to increase the surcharges and help the division become profitable, the Copenhagen-based company said Tuesday on its web site. The new calculations will start on a running basis this quarter, and all routes will use the new formula by January 1, 2009.

The shipping line will cut as many as 3,000 of its 25,000 jobs in the biggest cost-cutting exercise in the company’s 103 years, it said earlier this month, after it lost money in 2006, the first time in at least three years. Bloomberg 380 Centistoke bunker fuel prices traded in Rotterdam jumped 83 percent last year, and Maersk said today it has only been able to recover 55 percent of rising fuel costs under its current BAF formula.

“Naturally, this poses a significant exposure to Maersk Line,” company spokesman Vincent Clerc said in the statement. “Traditionally we have tried to recover this via rate increases.”

Maersk didn’t say how much of additional fuel costs it expects to recover using the new formula.

The calculations will be based on such elements as fuel consumption, transit time and imbalances of container flows, the company said. (Bloomberg)

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COPENHAGEN—A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S’s shipping line, the world’s largest, will change the formula for calculating fuel surcharges for customers to help the unit recover more of the costs from recent oil price increases.