Container Shipping Quarterly

Special Report

Ocean Alliance keeps status quo , renews partnership for another five years

By Greg Knowler

The members of the Ocean Alliance — CMA CGM , Cosco Shipping , Evergreen Line and OOCL — have renewed their partnership for another five years , a move that maintains the status quo for the four container carriers amid recent alliance restructuring that has roiled the container shipping sector .

The new vessel-sharing agreement ( VSA ) will begin in April with a total deployment of 321 ships , 119 of which will be provided by CMA CGM , with an aggregate capacity of roughly 4.5 million TEUs , CMA CGM said in a statement March 15 . Once the 2M Alliance of Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Co . ( MSC ) is dissolved early next year , the Ocean Alliance , which launched in the spring of 2017 , will become the largest of the carrier groupings by vessel capacity . Those ships will be deployed across 35 services linking Asia with Northern Europe , the Mediterranean , the Middle East and North America ' s east and west coasts .

The carrier also noted that “ CMA CGM and its partners are stepping up coordination and adapting the rotations ” to compensate for the impact on transit times and schedules of rerouting ships via southern Africa to avoid the Red Sea .

Alliance shake-ups

The news came shortly after Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd announced in January they would leave their respective current alliances — the 2M and THE — to form the Gemini Cooperation partnership in February 2025 . The Gemini VSA will operate a combined fleet of 290 vessels with an overall capacity of 3.4 million TEUs , significantly less than the Ocean Alliance ’ s deployed capacity commitment of 4.5 million TEUs .

Without Hapag-Lloyd , the remaining members of THE Alliance — Ocean Network Express , Yang Ming and HMM — will deploy an estimated 3.1 million TEUs of vessel capacity . MSC , operating as a standalone carrier once 2M ends , will be larger than any of the alliances , with an existing fleet of 5.5 million TEUs and additional newbuild vessels with nearly 1.2 million TEUs of capacity on order .

The Ocean Alliance will also have a significant advantage in global market share beginning next year , with 29 %. Gemini will have an estimated 21.6 % share , MSC will hold 19.9 % on its own and THE Alliance will have an 11.6 % share , according to Alphaliner .

The market share of the Ocean Alliance is expected to increase because its member carriers have a combined orderbook of almost 2.38 million TEUs scheduled for delivery from 2024 onward .

email : greg . knowler @ spglobal . com

CMA CGM will supply 119 of 321 ships deployed under the renewed Ocean Alliance VSA . Sheila Fitzgerald / Shutterstock . com

www . joc . com April 8 , 2024 | Journal of Commerce 21