News / THE Alliance carriers move to calm customer nerves after Hapag defection

Photo: Hapag-Lloyd

Following Hapag-Lloyd’s shock resignation from THE Alliance last week, its partners today reaffirmed their “unwavering commitment to maintaining a robust cooperation throughout 2024” – an announcement that included Hapag.

Since Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk announced that, from February 2025, they would form a new vessel-sharing alliance, the Gemini Cooperation, on the major east-west tradelanes, there has been intense speculation over the future of THEA.

The brief statement from the THEA members is an attempt to calm the nerves of customers and stakeholders, but stopped short of any guidance on the future of the VSA after next January.

“I think they were bounced into making some sort of statement, as Hapag’s decision has caused so much speculation in the market,” a carrier contact told The Loadstar.

Meanwhile, Alphaliner has assessed the options for THEA’s remaining members, and suggested they were “quite limited”.

The consultant noted that, despite being regarded as the ‘lead line’ of THEA, Hapag-Lloyd is not the main tonnage provider; that is Japanese carrier ONE, with 38.7% of the alliance’s capacity. Hapag-Lloyd provides 26.2%, followed by Yang Ming’s 17.6% and HMM with 17.5%.

Nevertheless, the statistics are somewhat reversed when the partners’ committed share of their total fleet is considered, with Yang Ming at 77.5%, HMM 69.7%, ONE 67% and Hapag-Lloyd with 41.3%.

ONE, Yang Ming and HMM currently deploy 2.3m teu on THEA services, which would be dwarfed by the rival Ocean Alliance if the partners decided to continue the VSA on their own.

“A continuation of THEA with three carriers would significantly weaken its position on the transatlantic, where HMM is not active and Yang Ming is only slotting on selected loops,” said Alphaliner.

But it said that the situation on the Asia-North America trade was “very different”, where ONE is supplying 41.1% of all THEA capacity compared with just 21.4% provided by Hapag-Lloyd.

Nevertheless, the ‘short odds favourite’ to be invited to join the jilted THEA partners is Taiwan’s ambitious Wan Hai, which already cooperates with Hapag-Lloyd outside the VSA on an Asia-US east coast loop.

According to Alphaliner data, the 11th-ranked carrier has a fleet of 118 ships, with a capacity of 478,000 teu, and has an orderbook of 17 ships, 112,000 teu.

Another possible scenario is that an Ocean Alliance partner (CMA CGM, Cosco, OOCL or Evergreen) could be persuaded to join THEA. Alphaliner said this “could be an option for ONE, HMM and Yang Ming”, but added: “For the time being, such a move is purely speculative.”

And the consultant said this was “unlikely” to happen in reverse: a THEA member joining the OA, given that the VSA already has “a huge market share in the Asia-Europe and transpacific trades”.