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As the new year gets under way, the market share of independent carriers on the transpacific container shipping trade route stands at 15%.
According to new research from liner analysts at Sea Intelligence, although this is well below the 35% achieved by independent carriers at the height of the pandemic, it is well above the 5% they enjoyed in 2012, indicating that, given certain market conditions, independent carriers are able to thrive on the route for limited periods of time.
“The share of capacity offered by non-alliance services on the transpacific has risen over time,” Sea-Intelligence noted.
“Exceedingly high spikes are seen at times where rates are very high due to capacity constraints, implying that non-alliance services can readily enter the market, provided profitability is sufficiently good.
“We can also see a drop-off again with the new alliance structures from 2025,” it added.
Source: Sea-Intelligence Consulting
This is in stark contrast with the Asia-North America East Coast trade, where the market share of independent carriers is currently just 4%…
Source: Sea-Intelligence Consulting
… while the Asia-North Europe trade has returned to its natural state of being 100% dominated by alliance tonnage, which marked a significant year-on-year change, as the independents’ share of the trade at the same point last year was 10%, and indicated how the launch of the new alliance networks in the first quarter of last year removed opportunities for niche carriers.
Source: Sea-Intelligence Consulting
Meanwhile, on the Asia-Mediterranean trade, independent carriers have market share of 10%, down from the 20% during the pandemic but well above the historical norm of the route being 100% alliance-dominated.
Much of the fluctuation in Asia-Europe market shares can be attributed to the Red Sea crisis and the changes in Asia-Russia container flows since the invasion of Ukraine. Over the course of last year there was an increasing number of alliance-operated Suez Canal transits on Asia-Mediterranean routings, largely led by CMA CGM and the Ocean Alliance, which began to encroach on niche carriers’ opportunities.
Also last year, container flows from Asia to Russia – all of which are outside the alliances – switched from direct to St Petersburg to hubbing in Turkish and Egyptian ports and transferring boxes to intra-Europe vessels, thus effectively reclassifying Russia-bound cargo into Asia-Mediterranean traffic.
Source: Sea-Intelligence Consulting
One further caveat is that these market share numbers categorise MSC as a standalone alliance, due to two factors: firstly, it operates vessel sharing agreements (VSAs) with the Premier Alliance on Asia-North Europe and with Zim on Asia-North America east coast; and secondly, because that is how it marketed itself following the 2M split from Maersk. After all, the whole point of alliances is that, by grouping together carriers have enough capacity to offer a global network, while MSC has built that capacity on its own, with the same result.
“Overall, the high degree of changes does show that even when alliance carriers have a fairly high share, this changes quite frequently and clearly does not lead to an insurmountable barrier for the injection of non-alliance capacity, said Sea-Intelligence.
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