Inspenet, May 21, 2023
Just 16 months after overtaking Maersk as the carrier with the highest capacity, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) once again grabs headlines by reaching a capacity of 5 million TEUs* and a total of more than 750 container ships, with a difference of more than 800,000 TEUs with the Danish company, which definitely remains in second place.
MSC expects two deliveries towards the end of May, the MSC MICHEL CAPPELLINI (from YZJ) and the MSC GEMMA (from CSSC), which will start their respective maiden voyages on the “Lion” and “Jade” services on May 30, will make the company exceeds the symbolic threshold before the end of the month. And it is that the achievement of the Swiss-Italian is not minor, by concentrating the largest capacity in the market with almost no mergers or acquisitions, according to an analysis by Alphaliner.
The challenge continues: MSC targets 6 million TEUs in the near future
The next threshold, which would be 6 million TEUs, seems like a real goal and not so distant. The order book of 1.66 million TEUs from at least 127 ships of the Swiss shipping giant could lead it to add a million more TEUs by mid-2024, that is, only with scheduled deliveries over the next 12 months.
With the expanded 6 million TEU capacity coming just in time for the 2 million vessel sharing agreement with Maersk to expire, MSC will be well positioned to operate an independent network with global reach. Adding MSC’s order book of 1.66 Mteu to its fleet of 5.00 Mteu and taking into account a series of planned charters, the Swiss-Italian company would theoretically reach a fleet of around 6.75 Mteu by the end of 2025.
However, Alphaliner warns, the actual growth of the company’s fleet will also depend on other factors, such as acquisitions of second-hand tonnage, chartering of vessels, as well as the sale of vessels and the return of chartered vessels to their owners. .
Unlike most other shipping lines in the top ten, MSC’s expanded capacity will allow it to offer attractive port combinations on all key trade routes without the need to join another alliance. However, Alphaliner expects MSC to maintain select alliances on a smaller scale on a number of routes.
capacity milestones
Founded in 1970, it took MSC 37 years to reach a fleet capacity of one billion TEUs in January 2007. Just four and a half years later, MSC surpassed the 2 Mteu mark in July 2011. The 3 Mteu milestone came in May 2017, and the 4 Mteu milestone in July 2021, half a year before MSC became the world number one ahead of Maersk with 4.28 Mteu.
These figures, Alphaliner clarifies, must be considered in the context of the general development of the liner shipping sector in recent decades, in which the world fleet of ships has increased fivefold in the last 25 years. Currently, the world containership fleet has no less than 6,596 units and 26.91 Mteu, compared to only about 5 Mteu at the beginning of the millennium.
* TEU is an acronym that comes from the English “Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit” and corresponds to a unit of measurement used in foreign trade to calculate the load capacity of containers. In other words, a TEU is the cargo capacity of a standard 20-foot (20′ x 8′ x 8′) container.
Photo 1 : Editorial credit: Vytautas Kielaitis / Shutterstock.com
Photo 2: Editorial credit: Aerial-motion / Shutterstock.com
Photo 3: Editorial credit: olrat / Shutterstock.com
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