News / Alliance reshuffle will increase box ship shortage as carriers hunt 'buffers'

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Forget being the Year of the Snake, 2025 will be “the year of the first major alliance-free carrier”.

The combined capacity of the liners controlling more than 1% of the global liner fleet grew by 10.3% last year, according to Alphaliner.  

As the only carrier opting to go-it-alone with no alliance in 2025, MSC unsurprisingly showed the strongest growth, in terms of teu slots in 2024. 

According to today’s Alphaliner newsletter, the Geneva-based carrier added 50 newbuilds and 692,000 teu slots to its fleet last year, which represents an above-market average growth of 12.3%.  

Its current fleet capacity is 6.3m teu, widening the gap from world number-two operator Maersk, with its 4.4m teu, to 1.9m teu. Alphaliner data shows the Danish carrier grew its fleet last year by 7.3%, with 23 newbuildings.  

Next month, Maersk will launch the Gemini Cooperation with Hapag-Lloyd, which operates a fleet with capacity of 2.3m teu, having expanded by 367,000 teu or 18.7% in 2024.  

The analyst found that, in percentage terms, Hapag-Lloyd saw the third-largest fleet expansion among the top 12 carriers last year, after PIL at 29.9% and Zim at 26%.  

On the other end of the spectrum, Evergreen’s 6.9% fleet growth was lower than the market average, having added 24 new vessels with 212,500 teu. 

And, despite the carriers’ relentless search for more tonnage in 2024, market demand remains strong, and the threat of overcapacity still hasn’t surfaced, reflected in low vessel idling and charter availability.  

Alpahaliner noted that the charter market was short on tonnage above 3,000 teu, with vessels of 5,500 teu and above “especially limited until the summer”. 

This low availability of vessels, it warned, had the potential to create further rises in charter rates.

It also noted that the commercially idle containership fleet ended the year “with a downtick” from what was already a low number. And over the past fortnight, Alphaliner again recorded “a reduction in carrier-controlled vessel idling”. In its latest survey, on 30 December, it recorded 58 ships, or 173,930 teu, as commercially idle.  

It reported: “At only 0.6% of the total cellular fleet, the liner sector can still be considered ‘fully employed’, and there is zero structural idling.” 

And the analyst warned that the upcoming alliance reshuffle was expected to further exacerbate demand for tonnage in the short-term because carriers would “require some extra tonnage as a ‘buffer’ until vessels gradually settle into their new network setups”. 

However, it concluded that how 2025 would ultimately unfold for capacity demand would “very much depend on geopolitics, with the key question being to know when the Red Sea crisis will end”. 

It explained: “An early reopening of the Suez route could derail the current bonanza for shipowners and carriers, with a likely return of overcapacity hitting particularly the largest ships.

“The threat is all the more plausible as another 2m teu of newbuilding capacity is expected to be delivered in 2025,” it added. 

The Loadstar last week reported that carriers are unlikely to resume regular transits through the Suez Canal until “at least” August.