In International Shipping News 09/11/2016
Although the new carrier alliances will only start operating from April 2017, battle lines on the main east-west routes are already being drawn, after the OCEAN Alliance and THE Alliance unveiled the respective service networks which they plan to start operating as of next year. The OCEAN Alliance will start with an initial deployment of 331 ships with an aggregate capacity of 3.3 Mteu. This figure is based on Alphaliner’s analysis of the 41 weekly services unveiled on 3 November by the four alliance members, comprising CMA CGM (including APL), COSCON, Evergreen and OOCL.
The carrier group is set to become the largest alliance in container shipping history, with an initial plan to offer 20 weekly sailings from Asia to North America and 11 weekly sailings from Asia to Europe. OCEAN will also jointly operate three transatlantic strings and seven Far East – Middle East/Red Sea loops.
The second new carrier group, THE Alliance, also unveiled its new network plan on 8 November and it intends to offer 31 weekly services. An estimated total of 244 ships with an aggregate capacity of 2.25 Mteu will be deployed by the six ‘THE’ Alliance members, made up of Hapag-Lloyd (with UASC), K Line, MOL, NYK and Yang Ming. They will jointly provide a total of 16 transpacific loops and eight Asia-Europe services, together with six transatlantic loops and one Far East-Middle East string. The services were scaled down from an original plan that included the participation of Hanjin Shipping, which could have pushed overall capacity deployed by THE Alliance up by some 500,000 teu.
Source: Alphaliner
