“It is expected that the next step will be the announcement of the dissolution of the Ocean Alliance, which is estimated to be at some point in 2023.” Lars Jensen said at the TPM23 conference held in Long Beach, California a few days ago.

Ocean Alliance members include COSCO SHIPPING, CMA CGM, OOCL and Evergreen. Lars Jensen said THE alliance would also be at risk when the alliance disbands. The dissolution of THE alliance, which includes HMM, Hapag-Lloyd, Ocean Networks (ONE) and Yang Ming, could trigger a domino effect and lead to German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd and Japanese shipping company (ONE). ) between merges.

“Mergers between the big shipping companies are rare, the only ones that are still possible would be Hapag-Lloyd and ONE,” Jensen said, setting an approximate date for the imminent merger. “It’s going to happen in 2025 or 2026, with the changes in the alliance, which creates a new landscape of carriers that will result in a much larger MSC than the other carriers, and a very large group of carriers, including Maersk, CMA CGM, COSCO and the combined Hapag-ONE,” said the analyst.

As COSCO SHIPPING lost a lot of market share during the epidemic, it is expected that the Ocean Alliance will announce its dissolution next. However, the carrier currently ranks second only to MSC in newbuilding orderbooks. As such, Jensen predicts that COSCO will operate aggressively in the coming years to regain lost ground, including courting customers from other members of the alliance. This may affect COSCO’s partners in the Ocean Alliance, which CMA CGM and Evergreen certainly do not want.

Moreover, the last threat to the Ocean Alliance may come from outside. After breaking up with MSC, Maersk may look for a new partner in some form, which effectively leaves only one option for the Danish shipping line.

“This partner will definitely not be COSCO, and the way Evergreen and Maersk operate is also completely mismatched. Then the rest is Hapag-Lloyd and ONE. We can certainly imagine that Maersk is willing to cooperate with Hapag-Lloyd and ONE in this regard. Partnering, but pretty sure Hapag-Lloyd and ONE won’t because they don’t want to play second fiddle to a bigger carrier,” Jensen said.

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