Offered port-pairs by carrier alliances (2017-2024)
The current three-alliance structure in container shipping has been present since April 2017, and will be for another month, before a new structure takes its place in February 2025. Looking at trends across these 8 years can provide a good sense of how these alliances have positioned themselves in the market. One such metric to analyse is offered port-pairs, says Sea-Intelligence in an analysis.
It elaborates:
Figures 1 and 2 show the distinct port-pairs offered by each of these alliances on both Asia-North America West Coast (NAWC) and Asia-North Europe (NEUR). These are all direct port-pair connections and do not include any transhipments. By distinct, we are counting each port-pair only once per month, irrespective of how many times that connection was made.
For Asia-NAWC, the market positioning is quite different for 2M. They offer the fewest direct distinct port-pairs, while Ocean Alliance and THE Alliance have largely been in line with each other. This points to very different network design strategies. Given the relative size of 2M, it seems improbable that they offer a more limited product in comparison, and points towards the broader usage of a hub-and-spoke model i.e., fewer mainliner connections and a greater focus on transhipment.
On Asia-NEUR, at the start of the analysed period, there was a clear difference in strategies. In recent months, however, that difference has more or less eroded, with all three carrier alliances offering port-pairs within a much narrower range.
Across the entire time-period, two things stand out the most: firstly, there has not really been a change in the market dynamics between alliances (with respect to this metric) throughout their current lifecycle, and secondly, the Red Sea crisis did not materially impact the carriers’ networks in terms of distinct port-pair connections.
Source: Exim News Service: Copenhagen, Dec. 19