Status Quo for “orphan” ocean cargo carriers

In the wildly unstable ocean cargo carrier arena, it appears that the CKYHE Alliance is going to remain in place…for the time being.

According to Alliance spokesmen, Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha (K Line), Yang Ming Line and Hanjin Shipping will continue to share vessels and deployment schedules while competitors plan to realign services.

As reported in LM, the newly-formed, “Ocean Alliance,” comprising CMA CGM, COSCO Container Lines, Evergreen Line and Orient Overseas Container Line signed a memorandum of understanding to form a consortia covering the Asia-Europe, Asia-Mediterranean, Asia-Red Sea, Asia-Middle East, transpacific, Asia-North America East Coast, and transatlantic trades.

This leaves the G6 Alliance down to four members: Hapag-Lloyd, Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM), Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) and Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK).

Meanwhile, the 2M Alliance composed of Maersk and MSC has not made any moves to expand and/or partner with what Drewry Maritime Advisors call “the orphans.”

The four alliances are more closely matched in the Asia-North America trade (which unlike Asia-Europe retains some small non-alliance capacity) with CKYHE coming out on top with a 30% share, followed closely by the G6 (26%) and 2M (23%), while Ocean Three lags a bit on 15%.

Based on the current capacity shares the Ocean Alliance will take over as the largest carrier VSA on the Transpacific with a share of just under 36%, while in Asia-North Europe it will be within five percentage points from 2M with a nominal capacity share of 31%.

Drewry says the next big question is – what will happen to the orphans? Will they club together to take on 2M and OCEAN, or will they form other (smaller) cliques to maintain the four-alliance structure?

According to Simon Heaney, senior manager of supply chain research at Drewry, analysts cannot pretend that it knows the answers, but clues are emerging very quickly.

The day after the Ocean announcement Hapag-Lloyd (G6) confirmed that it is in talks with UASC (Ocean Three for now) about “forms of cooperation including a potential combination of their mutual container shipping operations…. To date, the discussions conducted between the two carriers have not resulted in any binding agreement and no assurance can be given that these discussions will lead to a definitive agreement.”

A combined Hapag-Lloyd/UASC would give it a 7.6% share of the Asia-North Europe market and 6.5% of the Transpacific, based on current nominal capacity. 

“To compete with 2M and OCEAN in those routes they would need to bring in other carriers. Outside of those trades UASC will be very keen to find a replacement partner to CMA CGM to help it fill its 13,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in the Asia-Middle East route,” says Heaney.