Alliance Merry-go-round Spins Again

 

To the surprise of many it was announced last Wednesday that four carriers – CMA CGM, COSCO Container Lines, Evergreen Line and OOCL – from three different alliances are planning to join forces to create the OCEAN Alliance, to become operational from April 2017 subject to regulatory approval.

 

There has been much speculation regarding potential changes to alliance membership following CMA CGM’s pending takeover of NOL/APL and the merger between the two Chinese state-backed lines Cosco and CSCL. 

 

However, while numerous permutations dropped into Drewry’s inbox, some of which correctly identified one or two of the parties involved none correctly guessed the precise OCEAN combination. It is still possible to keep a secret in container shipping it seems. 

 

In retrospect, something was clearly on the cards when the CMA CGM representative was a no-show at last week’s TOC Asia conference.

 

According to the joint press release OCEAN (initially for a period of five years) will cover more than 40 services in the Asia-Europe, Transpacific, Transatlantic and Asia-Middle East and Red Sea trades. 

 

The last two are interesting as it could be a sign that future alliances will break through their traditional, self-imposed East-West trade perimeters.

 

The development still leaves plenty of questions unanswered. There remains a myriad of possibilities in terms of what the “orphaned” carriers – those partner lines left behind by the four OCEAN carriers – will do in response.