 MSC achieves highest ever carrier market share |
Source |
American Shipper |
Post Date |
08/28/2024 |
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After a brief lull, the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) continues to increase its market share in 2024.
With the addition of around 400,000 teu to its fleet so far this year, the Geneva -based carrier? share of the operated fleet rose to 19.8% at the of July, marking the highest ever figure recorded by a carrier.
Only Maersk has come close to dominating the market in the same way. The latter reached a peak market share of 19.4% in 2018, but has seen its market participation decline in each of the five consecutive years since then.
In addition to MSC, three carriers increased their market share compared to a year ago: Israel? ZIM moved ahead of Taiwan? Yang Ming for the first time since 2011 after grabbing an extra 0.2% of market share, bringing its participation to 2.4%
Although ZIM? fleet has fallen in number of units from the middle of last year (139 to 128 ships), the delivery of significantly larger vessels has increased its teu capacity by nearly 20% in just twelve months.
The Haifa-based line is hoping larger and greener vessels will enable it to grow further its share, and it is targeting a double-digit cargo increase in 2024 following a 4.4% y-o-y uplift in Q1.
Japan? Ocean Network Express increased its market share from 5.9% to 6.4% year-on-year, while Hapag-Lloyd saw a rise from 6.8% to 7.2%.
MSC? market share reached 19.8% at July, the highest ever logged by a carrier ZIM, ONE and Hapag-Lloyd also increased market penetration over the past year Maersk continues to lose market share, after reaffirming a fleet cap
Recent expansion by mid-tier carriers in the 7-14,000 teu segment will not challenge the top 10 Orderbook pipelines will further boost MSC and CMA CGM
Year ago comparisons confirm Maersk? declining market share. The delivery of 25 newbuildings including 75,000 teu of methanol/ methanol enabled neo-Panamaxes temporarily halted the company? slide in the first half of the year, but the tr down resumed in July.
Maersk, which has opted to cap fleet size in favour of non-shipping growth, reiterated in April it ints to remain in a target fleet range of 4.1-4.3 Mteu. This will inevitably curb its market share at a time of rapid growth by competitors, notably MSC and CMA CGM.
Five top 10 carriers now have orderbooks bigger than Maersk?. The group could come under pressure from shareholders for the strategy if financial returns do not improve, with the group? preliminary figures for Q2 indicating an operating margin of 4% for H1 2024, below its long-term target of >6%, despite the Red Sea crisis.
Elsewhere, CMA CGM and HMM recorded small decreases in market share relative to their size. Evergreen and Yang Ming saw larger declines
The top 10 carriers continue to dominate the container shipping market. As of July, they collectively represented 83.9% of the operated fleet, a small decline on the 84.0% registered a year ago.
This ?ew normal?follows a spike during COVID when well-resourced lines turboged their fleets to benefit from pandemic rates and increasing the top 10 share from previous levels of 82-83%.
Growth in mid-tier orderbook does not threaten top 10 Mid-tier carriers, particularly those ranked 11-20 have also recently stepped up newbuilding orders, moving into the larger size segments.
Wan Hai, PIL, X-Press Feeders, Sinokor, TS Lines, and to a lesser extent SITC, KMTC and Unifeeder, have all recently placed orders in the 7-14,000 teu size range.
Total orders for the 11-20 ranked carriers equal around 355,000 teu, with nearly half by number above 7,000 teu.
This is unlikely to eat into the top 10 carriers?hold on the market, however. Instead, the market share of mid-tier carriers is expected to remain around 6.5-6.6%, while the top 10 carrier share should remain the same or even increase slightly, due mainly to the huge orderbooks of MSC and CMA CGM (a massive 1.2 and 1.1 Mteu respectively).
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