Sea freight is not an easy business: geopolitical conflicts, pirate attacks, trade wars... The Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical upheavals have tested the ability of shipping companies to maintain a reliable service. Companies in the sector have paid the price over the past two years. And yet, with the Danish giant Maersk reporting good annual results, the news looks good, with the reopening of the Red Sea in 2025 expected to boost world trade.
It is against this tense geopolitical and commercial backdrop that the major maritime alliances will be redesigned. These alliances are strategic partnerships between several shipping lines, enabling them to pool their resources to offer more competitive services and wider geographical coverage. According to Alphaliner, around 80% of the world's container transport capacity is managed by these alliances.
Redefining shipping alliances
These changes provide us with an opportunity to take a look back at the key players in the sector, while highlighting the sometimes complicated relationships that oscillate between cooperation and competition.
Until 2024, three alliances dominated the market:
- Alliance 2M: created in 2015, this alliance between Ap Moller Maersk (Denmark) and Mediterranean Shipping Company (Switzerland) aimed to rationalize capacity on major routes, while offering quality services. However, growing divergences prompted the two giants to part ways. The reasons for this divorce lie in their different operational strategies. Maersk, with its iconic blue fleet and reputation for reliability, is reinventing itself as a logistics integrator, seeking to offer an end-to-end service that ensures punctuality and predictability. At the same time, MSC, the discreet Geneva-based giant, has chosen to pursue aggressive fleet expansion, positioning itself as a "non-alliance carrier" that favors direct calls and extensive global coverage.
- Ocean Alliance: this alliance brings together COSCO Shipping (China), OOCL (Hong Kong), Evergreen (Taiwan) and CMA CGM (France), and boasts a combined capacity of 4.5 million standardized containers and over 330 container ships. This alliance has been extended until 2032.
- THE Alliance: comprising Hapag-Lloyd (Germany), Yang Ming Marine Transport (Taiwan), Ocean Network Express (Japan), and HMM (South Korea), has optimized vessel utilization through sharing agreements. However, Hapag-Lloyd is leaving the alliance at the end of January 2025. THE Alliance became PREMIER Alliance in February 2025.
The birth of Gemini Cooperation, MSC goes it alone
In February 2025, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd will launch a new operating partnership under the name Gemini Cooperation, which will focus on optimizing transit times, improving schedule reliability and reducing emissions through the use of greener ships. With a fleet of 300 to 340 vessels, with an overall capacity of 3.4 to 3.7 million TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, which corresponds to a standardized container). To complete this armada, the organization offers between 27 and 29 main services, supported by a fleet of 30 regional shuttles, guaranteeing exhaustive coverage and an agile response to the varied logistics needs of their customers.
At the same time, although MSC will continue to operate on its own, the company has joined forces with the Premier Alliance on the Asia-Europe route from February 2025. This cooperation will take the form of a slot exchange. MSC now charters slots for Premier Alliance's Asia-Europe services, enabling the latter to operate nine weekly services on this route.
Freight giants on the stock exchange
Eleven of the 20 largest container shipping companies are listed on the stock exchange (including the Ocean Network Express joint venture between Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha).
Sea freight companies are now back in the spotlight after their dizzying fall on the stock market. The biggest listed players have lost an average of 42.27% of their market value since their January 2022 high. This trend is tending to reverse itself if we look at the recent period, despite the closure of the Red Sea at the beginning of 2024, which mainly impacted the European carriers most present on this route. Seafreight companies have thus gained 34.9% over the last twelve months, with a 5.6% rise in the last week alone.
The good stock market performance is consistent with a rise in freight prices in 2024. Tensions were exacerbated by strikes in German ports and unfavorable weather conditions, in addition to capacity pressures due to ship attacks in the Red Sea and accelerating US demand. Importers, seeking to avoid supply disruptions, accepted higher costs, which pushed freight prices even higher. The average cost of shipping a 40-foot container has risen by 256% in one year, although this remains below the peak of $10,377 in September 2021.
The trend has been downwards since this autumn, especially as the new alliances will also bring prices down. However, the threat of a tariff war initiated by President Donald Trump is heightening uncertainty about trade from China. At the beginning of January, only costs between China and US shores were rising. Since then, prices have fallen on all major routes from Shanghai.
