Shift in alliance market shares
February 1st marked the start of a new competitive landscape in the pivotal deep-sea container trades from Asia to North America and Europe. Consequently, Sea-Intelligence looked at the changes in the market share of the shipping line alliances when compared to last year.
It elaborated:
“Figure 1 shows the Asia-North America West Coast market share for both March 2024 and March 2025, for the shipping line alliances in operation in the two different timelines. Please note that ‘other’ here refers to the capacity across all non-alliance services, from both non-alliance carriers, and alliance carriers operating independent services outside of the alliance cooperation.
“Here we find a slight loss of market share for Ocean Alliance. It is not because they are reducing their capacity, but simply because the other carriers are injecting capacity at a higher pace than Ocean Alliance itself. They do, however, clearly remain the largest alliance, operating 35% of the planned capacity. Premier Alliance is the interesting one to watch. Despite seeing Hapag-Lloyd leave the alliance, Premier Alliance essentially maintains the same market share as THE Alliance had. Gemini Cooperation is clearly the smallest player in the Transpacific trade into the NAWC.
“We find a similar pattern on Asia-North America East Coast as well, where Ocean Alliance continue to hold the largest market share, with Premier Alliance maintaining a similar market share as the outgoing THE Alliance, while Gemini Corporation has the smallest market share. The difference between Premier Alliance and Gemini Cooperation however, is a very marginal 0.2 percentage points in favour of Premier Alliance.
“The changes in the competitive landscape between the carrier alliances is likely to create a significant competitive pressure, as the carriers adjust to the new situation. For shippers, this is likely to manifest itself as a downwards pressure on freight rates.”
Source: Exim News Service: Copenhagen, Feb. 10