News / Maersk and Cosco lose out as the battle for market share goes organic

ID 110546929 © Denys Yelmanov

The competitive landscape is changing for ocean carriers – and Maersk and Cosco find themselves losing the ‘organic growth game’. 

According to the Sea-Intelligence Sunday Spotlight report, based on the market share of carriers’ operated fleet capacity, the global container shipping landscape “changed dramatically” between 2010-2020. 

The maritime analyst attributed this to a jump in capacity via ultra-large container vessels, the launch of mega-alliances and significant consolidation, which saw today’s top 10 carriers increase their 55% market share in 2010 to some 82% in 2020.  

And Sea-Intelligence data shows that from 2020 to today, change has been “much more modest” – today, the market share of the top 10 carriers is around 86%. 

Sea-Intelligence explained that there had been little M&A activity across the top carriers in the past five years, and so competition for organic market share growth “is changing the competitive landscape”. 

MSC’s massive fleet has made it “a very strong competitor”, but the analyst added that HMM, Zim, and Wan Hai were also contenders if their market share gains are seen in the context of their smaller fleet sizes.  

Meanwhile, Maersk and Cosco “are clearly losing out in the organic game”, when it comes to market share, says the data. 

“Maersk has on previous occasions stated it was not focused on market share, but instead focused on profitability and end-to-end logistics services,” said Sea-Intelligence. “But does not change the fact that this does, to some degree, reduce their competitiveness on the scale factor in the ocean business.”

According to the data, the Danish carrier has lost 0.9 percentage points, in terms of market share, over the past 15 years, despite the acquisition of Hamburg Süd in 2017, with its market share of 2.9%. 

Beside Cosco and Maersk, Taiwanese Yang-Ming and Japan’s ONE are the only others among the top 10 carriers that have last lost market share in the past five years.  

Source: Sea-Intelligence Sunday Spotlight

Interestingly, Sea-Intelligence found that MSC’s gain almost exactly matched the loss seen by Maersk and Cosco.  The Swiss-headquartered shipping giant’s share grew just under 5%, while Maersk’s dropped just over 3% and Cosco’s just under 2%.  

ONE and Yang Ming have seen minor losses in market share and Hapag-Lloyd saw “just a minor gain,” the analyst added.