Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk have created an alliance for joint transportation – Kommersant
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Today, January 17, two large maritime freight operators – the Danish A. P. Moller-Maersk and the German Hapag-Lloyd – announced on the creation of an alliance within which they will jointly use each other’s container ships for transportation. As part of the alliance, which they called Gemini Cooperation, carriers will share 290 ships with a total load of 3.4 million containers. This should increase the efficiency of companies and the accuracy of cargo delivery times. 60% of the joint capacity will be used by Maersk, 40% by Hapag-Lloyd. The agreement will come into force in February 2025.
As experts note, the agreement between two large sea carriers significantly changes the system of alliances in this market. Hapag-Lloyd said it would exit THE Alliance with South Korea’s HMM, Singapore’s Ocean Network Express and Taiwan’s Yang Ming by next year. Maersk has previously announced that as of January 2025 it will leave the 2M alliance with Mediterranean Shipping, which it has been a member of since 2015. In total, Maersk has 740 container ships, Hapag-Lloyd has 264.
After a surge in demand for container shipping during the pandemic, demand for containers has fallen in recent years. At the end of 2023, carriers were faced with the need to redirect ships around the Red Sea due to attacks by Yemen’s Houthis, causing prices to rise significantly grew up. At the same time, according to experts, the main problem for companies in the medium term will be excess capacity with insufficient demand. “Despite disruptions in the Red Sea affecting short-term spot container prices, the industry is significantly oversupplied relative to demand: seaborne cargo volumes in November were only 5% higher than in 2019, and container ship volumes were more than 20% exceeds the level of 2019,” Barclays analysts note.
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