Dive Brief:
- CMA CGM, COSCO, OOCL and Evergreen extended their Ocean Alliance for five additional years, the shipping lines announced this week.
- The operational agreement was set to expire in 2027 and has been extended until 2032. The agreement allows the carriers to share vessels and charter and exchange space on one another’s vessels.
- The Ocean Alliance covers seven major East and West trades, connecting Asia to Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North America’s East Coast and West Coast, according to the release.
Dive Insight:
With 2025 bringing a Maersk-MSC split and a Maersk alliance with Hapag-Lloyd, the industry was left pondering what would be next of the remaining alliances.
“I had expected them to split up, but here we are,” Lars Jensen, CEO and Partner at Vespucci Maritime, said of the Ocean Alliance in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday.
The Ocean Alliance formed in 2017. At that time, it surpassed the Maersk and MSC’s 2M alliance in Asia-Europe and Asia-North America trade capacity.
With the 2M alliance set to end in 2025, that leaves MSC without an alliance.
“My expectation is that MSC largely will go it alone - they have the scale to do so, and the flexibility associated with not having to compromise with partners is indeed valuable,” Jensen said.
It also leaves Ocean Network Express, HMM and Yang Ming, which are part of THE Alliance, in an “uncomfortable” position, Jensen said. Since these carriers form the smallest alliance, there’s a few things they could do such as refine their niche. For example, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd's Gemini Cooperation will have fewer direct port-to-port combinations and more transshipments once the agreement goes live in 2025.
THE Alliance could take the opposite direction, according to Jensen.
“Speculation in the market has pointed to potentially having Wan Hai [Lines] join THE. This could potentially happen, but Wan Hai will be far from able to plug the gap left over from Hapag's exit,” Jensen said.
