2M Alliance: Future Intentions Become Clearer

As we covered last month, Maersk & MSC recently announced they be will ending their 2M Alliance vessel sharing in 2025, and their longer term intentions are now starting to become clearer.

These are the world’s biggest two carriers and have been collaborating since 2015. Therefore, the announcement that they are going to split looked likely to shake up all alliances in the coming months.

When the news originally broke, the market feeling was that MSC would choose to proceed as a standalone carrier, but Maersk would be likely to seek alternative partnerships.

However, it now appears that Maersk are also planning to go forward as a standalone carrier, which suggests there will be no changes to the steamship lines currently making up THE Alliance or the OCEAN Alliance.

The Maersk CEO is understood to have commented on the situation recently, reportedly saying that he did NOT expect the end of 2M to induce the role of musical chairs that has been talked about, with everybody trying to find new partners.

He also said “Today there are three major networks, in the future there will be four.”

Therefore, it seems likely that the big two will be operating their vessels as independent networks by 2025.