Recently, Mediterranean Shipping (MSC), the world's largest container shipping company, and Maersk Line (MSK), the second largest, jointly announced that they will terminate the 2M alliance in January 2025.
The parties said: Mediterranean Shipping and Maersk recognize that the situation has changed significantly since the two companies signed a 10-year alliance agreement in 2015, and that the termination of 2M alliance operations will enable both companies to continue to pursue their respective strategies and focus on integrated networks.
"Our strategy is very different now, and we are in a very different position than when we formed an alliance with MSC in 2015," said Johan Sigsgaard, executive vice president of Maersk. "We don't have an integrated strategy, and at the same time, we are all facing the arrival of 20,000-plus TEU vessels, so having an alliance is a good tool to ensure that the vessels are fully utilized.
Sigsgaard said the airline's executives had concluded that an independent Maersk network would put the company in a stronger position for years to come, depending on cargo control for its end-to-end logistics. We now have to focus on integrating our offshore and onshore operations to gain more control.
Antonella Teodoro, a senior adviser the MDS Transmodal of British transport economists, said after the announcement that the imminent dissolution of the 2M alliance was not a surprise.
"Since 2020, we have been monitoring the rapid growth of capacity operated by Maersk and MSC," she said. "We also noticed that more and more services are operating 90% or more of the two lines alone.
From the third quarter, MSC, and Maersk in particular, are increasingly operating services in the absence of other services. More than 1/3 of Maersk's capacity was independent of the alliance in Q4 2022, compared to 4% in Q4 '21, according to MDS Transmodal.
2M operates nine services in trans-Pacific trade. For its five U.S. East Coast services, the alliance has a ship-sharing agreement in which Zim Integrated Shipping Services gets seats on those services, while the latter offers slots on its two separate Asian services. 2M Alliance operates three U. S.-Nordic routes, two U. S.-Mediterranean routes and nine Asia-Europe routes, six of which connect Northern Europe and three of which connect Mediterranean routes.