The current overcapacity in the liners market and its consequences on freight rate for deepsea
shipping led the ship-operators to set between themselves so called “alliances”, in reality
joint ventures to optimize capacity and rationalize service. Starting with the aborted P3
proposal, several cases of technical and operational cooperation such as alliance, Vessel
Sharing Agreement (VSA) or Slot Exchanges (SE) have been succeedingly emerging and have
finally led to the creation (or the strengthening) of four huge alliances in the sector of
container shipping.
As the perimeter of such alliances has also evolved from local/single trade based to a global
scale, it is no longer possible to consider liners market issues such as evolution of services
and competition on a regional or national basis. Regulation authorities but also shippers and
freight forwarders have to look at this new model from a world perspective.
Shippers are always looking for better services and improved competitiveness and are
therefore fully supportive of the any move by ship operators which helps to improve both
the (financial) sustainability and the performance of the operators.
But this very recent and still growing concentration of the market has increased the risk that
distortion of fair competition may happen in the future with its potential impacts on the
market for all end consumers.
To illustrate above statement a situation of the actual market shares on four main trades is
shown below.
The present initiative by European Shippers Council is intended to lower the level of risk by
setting some form of cooperation and/or communication between the various groups of
players in that field. This initiative calls for four pillars which are all necessary to achieve a
common goal of a fair and competitive liners market. It is for these reasons that the
European Shippers’ Council has determined the following four pillars