The Swiss-Italian shipping company MSC announced its partnership with an alliance of Asian shipowners, which includes ONE from Japan, HMM from South Korea, and Taiwan’s Yang Ming. Previously, these Asian players collaborated under the name THE Alliance, but the expanded structure will now be called Premier Alliance.
MSC’s entry into this alliance with the three Asian companies will strengthen the Pacific-focused collaboration and help it expand more effectively into routes to Europe. According to MSC’s announcement, the cooperation will include routes to both Northern European and Mediterranean ports.
The Premier Alliance will officially start working with MSC in February 2025, one month after MSC’s partnership with Maersk under the 2M Alliance formally ends, a split announced by the shipowners in early 2023.
Notably, Maersk quickly formed another alliance after parting ways with MSC. Earlier this year, the Danish shipowner announced its partnership with Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd, under the name Gemini Cooperation.
Adding another twist to this reshuffle, Hapag-Lloyd was previously the European partner in the Premier Alliance, a role now taken over by MSC.
Peter Sand, a well-known supply chain expert from Xeneta, commented in an interview with ShippingWatch that MSC’s entry into the Premier Alliance is good news for the alliance’s European customers. After Hapag-Lloyd’s departure, they were facing a potential drop in service quality and frequency, but MSC’s involvement may even improve the offering for European customers, said Peter Sand.
“Currently, THE Alliance offers four services a week on the Asia-Europe route. From 2025, with MSC as a partner, this will increase to seven connections per week,” Peter Sand explained.
Reluctant agreement in the US
This reshuffle doesn’t stop there. Paradoxically, in the same week that MSC announced its partnership with the three Asian companies, a milestone was reached for the Maersk-Hapag Lloyd alliance as well.
The US Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) authorised the Gemini Cooperation alliance to operate in the US market. The alliance was expected to begin operations in the US as early as July, but the FMC had halted the entry due to insufficient information submitted by Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd regarding the alliance’s impact on competition.
The FMC has now allowed the Gemini Cooperation to operate, although it emphasised that the shipowners’ partnership would be subject to “close monitoring.” FMC Commissioner Daniel B. Maffei wrote in a statement that he still had many questions and concerns about the agreement’s impact on competition, but existing law did not provide the FMC with more time to analyse the documents.
Lars Jensen, a renowned shipping expert, commented on LinkedIn that the FMC chief’s statement suggests that, if more time had been available for analysis, the outcome could have been different, indicating a strong sense of scepticism surrounding this agreement.
Gemini Cooperation will officially begin operating on most major trade routes from February 2025. The alliance will deploy 290 container ships with a combined capacity of 3.4 million TEUs.