It is the greatest change in the international shipping market that has taken place in recent years. In the past decades, large international shipping groups, 2M, Ocean Alliance and THE Alliance, controlled the market.
2M is the grouping of Maersk and MSC, Ocean Alliance is made up of CMA CGM, Cosco and Evergreen, while The Alliance consists of Hapag-Lloyd, HMM, ONE and Yang Ming. All three international shipping alliances have experienced a decrease in market share since the start of 2020.
According to the weekly report from Sea Intelligence, the international container shipping alliances are indeed fighting for capacity market share on the Transpacific and Asia-Europe trades, and despite the turbulence of COVID-19, the fierce competition continued to intensify. Remarkably, the market shares of non-alliance services expand to roughly 30%, higher than 2M and Ocean Alliance, due to deploying whatever size shipping containers they can muster.
At the start of this month, an American shipper claimed that a couple of international shipping companies have repeatedly contravened the US Shipping Act by filing a $600,000 lawsuit with the Federal Maritime Commission.
“These collusive international shipping alliances give respondents venue and opportunity to co-ordinate discriminatory practices such as those alleged herein to violate contracts with shippers like MCS in favour of exploiting profit opportunities on the spot market,” the suit alleges.
SOURCE: SPLASH247