Alphaliner: Container Shipper That Grew the Most in 2022

Now, May 2023:

Data released by Alphaliner has suggested, as of May 8, the total number of container ships in operation worldwide reached 6,597. An increase of 73 ships compared with two months ago. The total global shipping capacity is 26,895,441 TEU, an increase of 342,979 TEU from two months ago.

What's the Deal in 2022:

Despite a year-long reduction in prime-line spot freight prices on significant routes from China, which dropped from their high in early 2022 to pre-Covid, according to Alphaliner. The previous year proved to be especially profitable for regular container shipping: Carriers were able to maintain a profit because of stable contract prices and a robust transatlantic market. This revealed that four container shipping companies outperformed the rest in growth over the past year.

However, in order to fully capitalize on the exceptionally robust market, many shippers made an attempt to increase their containerized capacity. There are notable differences between "winners" and "losers" in Alphaliner's year-over-year analysis of the top 12 container shipping lines.

Alphaliner guarantees that MSC was once again the most expanding among the major shipping corporations last year, adding another 321,500 TEU (+7.5%) after increasing the capacity of its fleet by 411,000 TEU slots (+10.7%) in 2021. However, the additional boats provided MSC with 83,600 TEU capacity. MSC's rapid expansion was mostly fueled by the carrier's continuing acquisition of second-hand tonnage, which allowed it to pass Maersk on January 5, 2022, to become the biggest containership in the world.

Data by Alphaliner

MSC's fleet capacity already exceeds that of its Danish partner 2M by over 379,000 TEU almost a full year later. Due to Maersk having to redeliver a sizable portion of its contracted tonnage, the Danish business lost 61,700 TEU of capacity in 2022. According to marine researcher Alphaliner, these ships were resold or delivered to rival carriers who were ready to accept longer charter terms or pay higher charter prices.

Since concluding its collaboration with 2M partners on the Asia-Med and Asia-WCNA lines, ZIM has been very active in the chartering market, hence the line required some more tonnage to retain a strong presence on these routes.

The Israel-based carrier, which increased its fleet by about 120,000 TEU (+29%), was in the top 12 in terms of quickest rate of growth. The majority of this extra capacity, including three brand-new 11,900 TEU boats on long-term contracts, was rented out.

Additionally, he mentions that Evergreen has acquired twenty new ships in total, including seven mega max ships for the Asia-Europe routes. The capacity of 217,500 TEU that Evergreen acquired straight from the shipyards accounts for the Taiwanese line's ranking as the second-largest gainer of 2022 with a +12.5% increase.

CMA CGM increased capacity by more than 225,000 TEU, which resulted in the second-largest fleet rise in terms of raw numbers. Interestingly, the most expansionary lines in 2021 were MSC, Evergreen, and CMA CGM.

An intriguing example in point is COSCO Group (including OOCL), a Chinese carrier whose fleet declined for the second consecutive year. The Chinese company had another 2.1% decrease in operating capacity in 2018 after having lowered capacity by 3.2% in 2021. However, according to Alphaliner, COSCO has the second-largest ship order book in the sector with 885,000 TEU.

In addition to COSCO and Maersk, ONE (-0.8%) and HMM (-0.4%) also slightly decreased the size of their fleets.

According to Alphaliner, Wan Hai's 4.1% increase was in line with the market, while Hapag-Lloyd's 1.8% growth was below average. As Yang Ming received five brand-new 11,860 TEU ships, its fleet rose by 6.8%.

Individual operator counts are contrasted with the size of the global cellular fleet, which increased by 4.1% last year and now totals 26.40 M TEU.

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