Grand and New World Alliances form new Gang of Six

Six leading container lines will launch a new vessel network, the G6 Alliance, for the Asia-Europe trades in April next year.

The grouping brings together members of the Grand Alliance and the New World Alliance and will deploy 90 vessels in nine services to cover more than 40 ports in Asia, Europe and the Mediterranean. Service loops will cover Bohai in China and the Baltic region.

Involved from the Grand Alliance are NYK, Hapag-Lloyd and OOCL, with APL, Hyundai Merchant Marine and Mitsui OSK Lines from the New World Alliance.

The G6 alliance reflects a regrouping of resources in the container shipping market, spurred by Maersk’s order for a series of 18,000teu ships, with a service that included easier cargo booking systems and guarantees of punctuality on the Asia-Europe trades.

Major boxline owners are now racing to deploy larger ships on trades that offer high utility rates and economies of scale for lower-cost fleet operation.

MSC and CMA CGM, the second and third-largest containerlines, responded by creating an alliance deploying 53 ships, including 33 in the 13,800-14,000teu range, on the Asia-Europe trades, promising to match Maersk’s service levels.

The G6 Alliance responds to the challenge from the giants, creating a bigger alliance to protect its carriers in a market that is fast consolidating.

Steven Ng, head of corporate planning for OOCL in Hong Kong, said the six lines had been planning the G6 alliance for “quite some time” and that it was not a knee-jerk response to the tie-up between MSC and CMA CGM.

The alliance also addresses a problem facing each of the G6 lines individually: all six have ordered ships of more than 13,000teu for delivery over the next 30 months.

“If we are doing this separately, it is quite a challenge,” said Ng, adding that working together allowed the ships “to be introduced over a period of time allowing us to co-ordinate and phase-in to make the transition”.

According to the joint release by the six companies, the nine joint services will offer more frequent departures and more daily sailings from the major Asian, European and Mediterranean ports.

The schedule includes multiple weekly calls in Singapore, south China, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Southampton.

The ports of call are Le Havre, Antwerp, Bremerhaven, Thamesport, Dalian, Xingang, Ningbo, Qingdao, Xiamen, Kaohsiung, Cai Mep, Japanese ports, Colombo, Jeddah, and Port Said.

The new alliance will also offer a direct service from the Far East to the Baltic, with calls at Gdansk, Poland, and Gothenburg, Sweden, as well as transhipment in Singapore.