Container alliance grip on Transpacific trade slips

Non-alliance services on the Transpacific container trades have sharply increased in recent months, according to a Sea-Intelligence report.

Analysing the 13-week rolling average of capacity on the Asia-North America West Coast trades over the past decade, disruption in the balance of alliance and non-alliance capacity is clear since the outbreak of the pandemic.

After a stable period of around 80% alliance capacity share in 2012-2020, alliance capacity rose sharply to near 90% in response to the pandemic. “Clearly, the immediate impact of the pandemic was that non-alliance services were much more likely to be blanked than alliance services,” said Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.

Since that initial retreat to 10% of the Asia-North America West Coast container trade, non-alliance capacity has rebounded to represent 35% of capacity. Alliances dominated the Asia-North America East Coast trade from 2019, but non-alliance capacity has captured 10% of the market since mid-2020.

“The development on Asia-Europe is starkly different than on Asia-North America. The market on this trade is nearly fully serviced by alliances,” said Murphy. “The recent market disruption has done little to change this situation. A few non-alliance services have been seen; however, the number of such sailings and the small size of the vessels being used, means that this has an overall insignificant effect on the total capacity in the market.”

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The difference between the two trade lanes suggests lower barriers to entry on the Asia-North America trades, he added.