Maersk Line and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) have announced a ten-year vessel sharing agreement on the Asia-Europe, Transatlantic and Transpacific trades, a move expected to come ito force early next year.
The VSA, which will be referred to as 2M, replaces all existing VSAs and slot purchase agreements that Maersk Line has in these trades, the group noted.
The VSA will include 185 vessels with an estimated capacity of 2.1m TEU, deployed on 21 strings, and the overall purpose of the cooperation is to share infrastructure.
Maersk Line and MSC will be able to provide their customers with more stable and frequent services, covering more ports with direct services and the VSA will improve the efficiency of the Maersk Line and MSC networks through better utilisation of vessel capacity and economies of scale.
“I am very pleased with our agreement with MSC,' said Søren Skou, Maersk Line CEO. 'We share the same ambition to have as efficient and effective operations as possible.
'We will continue to provide our customers with competitive and reliable container shipping in the East-West trades at attractive prices,' he continued. 'To do so we have to be innovative and take out cost, while keeping a product that is best in class for our customers in terms of coverage, frequency and reliability. Our agreement with MSC is a step towards achieving all of these objectives in the East-West trades.”
The 2M VSA differs from the earlier proposed P3 alliance in two ways: first of all, the combined market share is much smaller. Secondly the cooperation is a pure VSA. There will be no jointly owned independent entity with executional powers.
The 21 strings are split as follows: Asia/North Europe: 6, Asia/Mediterranean: 4, Asia/US West Coast: 4, Asia/US East Coast: 2, North Europe/USA: 3, Mediterranean/USA: 2.
