Will ONE, Yang Ming and HMM form an alliance with MSC?

Looking forward to next year, MSC and Maersk's 2M alliance, which is the main east-west trade, will part ways. Maersk recently successfully poached Hapag-Lloyd from THE alliance and plans to form a new Gemini alliance in February next year, while MSC has stated that it will operate independently. In order to eliminate market doubts about the dissolution of the alliance liner, Ocean Alliance members solemnly committed to the alliance until 2032 at the end of last month, which allowed HMM, Yang Ming Shipping and Ocean Network Express (ONE) to remain in THE alliance as smaller groups.

The remaining members of THE Alliance, ONE, HMM and Yang Ming Shipping, have a combined shipping capacity of only 2.5 million TEUs without Hepaline, and may need new members to remain competitive.

AlixPartners pointed out: "Ocean Alliance announced that it will extend the cooperation period to 2032, which surprised the market. This will prompt the remaining members of THE Alliance to re-adjust their strategic directions or push them to reach a potential ship-sharing agreement with MSC." The agency Further analysis said: “If MSC insists on operating independently, this reorganization will form four different cooperative groups competing for key freight volumes in long-distance transportation, which will become an obstacle to freight rate increases.”

Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen made it clear during a speech at TPM, the annual container shipping summit held in Long Beach this week, that the Gemini cooperation will become an exclusive and independent cooperation platform between Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk.

At the same time, ONE CEO Jeremy Nixon firmly stated that the company will provide more optimized network solutions next year. Nixon told delegates that discussions about potential new alliance partners are still ongoing and that synchronized information will be provided early next month.

Despite market speculation that Wan Hai may join THE alliance, Lars Jensen, founder of container consultancy Vespucci Maritime, pointed out in a recent social media post that the Taiwanese liner company is far from strong enough to compensate for Hapag-Lloyd's withdrawal from THE alliance. The vacancy left behind.

Jensen believes that MSC is likely to continue to adhere to the strategy of operating independently. “MSC has the scale needed to operate independently and the flexibility that comes with not having to compromise with partners is extremely valuable.”

AlixPartners highlighted in its latest liner shipping report: "The dissolution of ocean carrier alliances has become the norm in the industry and will create counter-pressure to any trend towards higher freight rates."