In terms of tonnage deployed, MSC has overtaken its 2M partner Maersk. The shipping giant led by Soren Toft, last month deployed 1.02m teu of capacity on the Asia-Europe trade lane, representing 18.7% of all teu slots on the route. Evergreen and CMA CGM have led the capacity growth over the past 12 months on this main east-west trade lane, adding respectively 147,500 and 118,700 teu slots. This in turn has seen the OCEAN Alliance surpass 2M as the largest grouping on the trade.
While there have been many headlines about new entrants onto this tradelane in recent months, the actual numbers of new names are minimal when compared with the transpacific. Alphaliner reports the fleet of all newcomers stood in April at 25 ships with a combined capacity of 64,700 teu or just 1.2% of the market. The average vessel size of these ships was less than 2,600 teu, which compares to an average of 15,600 teu for the whole fleet on this trade route.
Overall, citing April data, Alphaliner counted 348 containerships deployed between Asia and Europe, representing a total capacity of 5.45m teu, which is an increase of 10.4% compared to April last year. While Maersk might have lost its lead on this tradelane and in the overall global rankings this year, it has recently overtaken CMA CGM and COSCO as the largest tonnage operator on the transpacific.
