Ocean freight carriers are about to receive their biggest shake-up in a decade as a brand new alliance structure gets underway from February 1st.
Most notably, we will see the end of the 2M alliance, Hapag Lloyd leave its current alliance to join Maersk in a newly formed partnership, and THE Alliance being renamed as the Premier Alliance. The latter being a very welcome change as the previous name was always a confusing one.
Several carriers have announced their new schedules this month and no doubt others are putting the finishing touches to them as they prepare for a new dawn in ocean freight.
Below sets out how the global carrier structure will look from February:
Gemini Cooperation – Maersk Line, Hapag Lloyd
Ocean Alliance – CMA CGM, Cosco, Evergreen, OOCL
Premier Alliance – HMM, ONE, Yang Ming
Independent – MSC*
* We understand MSC will slot exchange with the Premier Alliance on some Asia-Europe routes and with ZIM on some transpacific services.
It will certainly be interesting to see how these new arrangements pan out over the next few months.