Teu Capacity Hits Record High As Volume Dynamics Shift

The new Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd alliance, called the Gemini Cooperation, which is expected to launch in 2025, will have a 22% market share, while the Ocean Alliance (CMA CGM, COSCO and Evergreen) will have an estimated 29% of the market.

This has emerged from liner data showing that the global container vessel capacity is now more than 30 million TEU for the first time in the history of ocean freight.

As was reported yesterday, Mediterranean Shipping Company is leading the pack, according to the latest data released by maritime research platforms this week.

Both Alphaliner and Linerlytica have highlighted the new capacity threshold in their latest mid-year data updates.

Alphaliner has calculated that there are currently 7010 active ships worldwide, representing more than 358 million dwt.

MSC is leading the global fleet in terms of capacity, fuelling the expansion of the box ship segment. The shipping line reached three million TEU in 2017, four million TEU in July 2021 but was surpassed by Maersk, which achieved capacity of 4.2m TEU by January 2023.

However, MSC expanded its capacity further to five million TEU by May 2023.

Partially driving MSCs growth is its acquisition of second-hand Maersk vessels. Its purchase of a 9600 TEU former-Maersk vessel propelled MSC close to the six million TEU mark to achieve a 20% market share calculation.

According to Alphaliner, MSC has a total of 837 ships, of which it owns 539, and its total capacity is just 20 000 TEU short of six million. This makes the shipping line just one big ship delivery away from exceeding the six million TEU capacity level.

MSC has 99 vessels on order that will add nearly 1.2m TEU of capacity according to Alphaliner, which forecasts the line will reach seven million TEU by 2025.

Alphaliner said 15 new box ships with a combined capacity of 80 500 TEU were delivered to shipping lines.

Alphaliner and Linerlytica noted that 1.6m TEU of capacity has been added to the sector in the first half of 2024. According to Linerlytica an additional 1.49m TEU will be delivered by the end of 2024, at a rate of nearly two vessels per month.

Both data platforms highlighted a change in the size of vessels ordered, which has shifted from the focus on building Megamax vessels (over 20 000 TEU) to feeder and mid-sized vessels.