Commentary Trading Places

By Peter Tirschwell

Midsize carriers are realizing the urgency of building scale to remain competitive.

Could another round of container shipping consolidation be approaching?

Hapag-Lloyd’ s planned $ 4.2 billion acquisition of Zim Integrated Shipping Services, announced in February, shows carriers’ growing appetite for scale, including through consolidation, despite the lack of financial hardship that drove earlier rounds of industry mergers and acquisitions.

The risk of falling behind is acute. No. 1 carrier Mediterranean Shipping Co.( MSC), at 21.6 % of the global fleet by capacity following a massive expansion, is now more than three times the size of No. 5 Hapag-Lloyd and No. 6 Ocean Network Express( ONE), according to Alphaliner, with MSC accounting for 33.6 % of total container carrier fleet growth since 2000.

As a result, midsize carriers are realizing the urgency of building scale to remain competitive, pursuing that goal by aggressively acquiring tonnage and potentially considering once unthinkable mergers and acquisitions.

With outsized profits from the post-COVID period, carriers are seeking either“ core” or“ integrator” strategies where scale is key, said Brian Nemeth, global co-leader of logistics and transportation at Alix Partners.

A“ core” strategy focuses on ocean shipping and terminals while“ integrator” refers to endto-end activities including origin consolidation, warehousing, last-mile and visibility.

With the top 10 carriers controlling more than 85 % percent of the market, according to analyst Lars Jensen, merger opportunities are harder to find. Yet, any further deals would continue a“ persistent drive towards consolidation,” as Jensen wrote in his 2017 book Liner Shipping 2025.

While the Zim deal still requires approvals from the Israeli government, the fact that Hapag-Lloyd was able to overcome national security and other obstacles in signing the merger agreement proves that, as Robbert van Trooijen, consultant and former senior Maersk executive, told the Journal of Commerce,“ There are solutions to be found.”

Several Asian carriers are believed to be subscale in the current environment. Would Japan ever allow Ocean Network Express( ONE), which consolidated its three largest ocean carriers in 2017, to be merged into a larger combined carrier? Could South Korea revive a deal to privatize HMM after the last one collapsed in 2024?

The record 35 % order book as a percentage of the fleet illustrates top carriers’ aggressive pursuit of scale. As of December, the top 10 carriers controlled 79 % of the order book, although the actual figure is likely near 85 % when expected long-term charters are figured in, according to Alphaliner chief analyst Jan Tiedemann.

But what if the industry were to enter a downturn? Those larger players will start to ask,“ where do we see ourselves in 10 years from now?” van Trooijen said.

Under its“ 2030 Strategy,” ONE aims to increase its capacity to 3 million TEUs, a 42 % increase from its current fleet size. In March, it increased its stake to 48.9 % in the parent company of Seaspan, the largest non-operating owner of container ships. HMM in its own 2030 strategy plan also aims to double its fleet size.

Meanwhile, midsize carriers’ alliances could break up, leaving them at the mercy of larger carriers and unable to fill their suddenly toolarge ships.

“ Hapag-Lloyd leaving its prior alliance to join up with Maersk shows you can’ t always depend on stable alliances,” van Trooijen said.

That is all the more reason to think that the Hapag-Zim deal may represent a turning point.“ When we look at the industry and when we look at this downturn which we are talking about, I think the industry is very well-prepared,” S & P Global analyst Rahul Kapoor told TPM26 in March.

Indeed, according to Alix Partners, the Hapag-Zim deal was announced amid a strong financial phase for the industry, a change from the prior consolidation wave culminating in 2016 and 2017 when the industry was on much shakier ground financially.

For the container shipping industry, Alix’ s“ Altman Z” score, which measures the likelihood of bankruptcy( the lower the number, the greater the risk), was 1.19 in 2016. That was the year of the Hanjin bankruptcy, the Cosco / China Shipping merger, CMA CGM’ s acquisition of APL, Maersk announcing plans to buy Hamburg Sud, and key milestones in the Hapag-Lloyd / United Arab Shipping merger that was finalized in 2017. By 2025, it was more than twice as high, indicating much greater financial health, the Alix data shows.

As Van Trooijen put it in an article for Journal of Commerce, the relative financial health of the carriers has created a“ rare window in which transformative deals are both feasible and strategically rational.”

email: peter. tirschwell @ spglobal. com

70 Journal of Commerce | May 4, 2026 www. joc. com