Ocean Alliance set to become largest alliance

The consultancy said in its latest newsletter, that based on the orderbooks of its members, the Ocean Alliance, already the world’s largest carrier grouping in terms of deployed capacity, is forecast to “witness a massive growth in the coming years”. 

Alphaliner commented, “This expansion might prompt regulators to re-evaluate and redefine how big mega-alliances will be allowed to become. So far, these authorities have never publicly indicated a maximum permissible market share for carrier alliances.”

The Ocean Alliance of CMA CGM, COSCO Shipping Lines, Evergreen and OOCL operates a fleet of 303 container ships representing a total capacity of 4.22M TEU, said Alphaliner. It pointed out The Ocean Alliance is larger than the 2M VSA and THE Alliance (Hapag-Lloyd and Ocean Network Express Yang Ming and HMM), which both have a size of around 3.1M TEU. 

Alphaliner figures show The Ocean Alliance’s market share, in terms of fleet capacity deployed, currently stands at 34% in the Asia–Europe trade and at 35% on Asia–North America routes. These shares are expected to further increase, with a combined orderbook of almost 2.38M TEU for delivery from 2024 onwards.