THE Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) has overtaken its 2M partner Maersk as the largest carrier on the Asia-Europe route in terms of tonnage, according to Alphaliner.

While Maersk might have lost its lead on this tradelane and in the overall global rankings this year, it has recently overtaken CMA CGM and Cosco as the largest tonnage operator on the transpacific.

The Soren Toft-led carrier last month deployed 1.02 million TEU of capacity on the tradelane, representing 18.7 per cent of all TEU slots on the route, notes Singapore's Splash 247.

Evergreen and CMA CGM have led the capacity growth over the past 12 months on this main east-west tradelane, adding respectively 147,500 and 118,700 TEU slots. This in turn has seen the OCEAN Alliance surpass 2M as the largest grouping on the trade.

While there have been many headlines about new entrants onto this tradelane in recent months, the actual numbers of new names are minimal when compared with the transpacific. Alphaliner reports the fleet of all newcomers stood in April at 25 ships with a combined capacity of 64,700 TEU or just 1.2 per cent of the market.

The average vessel size of these ships was less than 2,600 TEU, which compares to an average of 15,600 TEU for the whole fleet on this trade route.

Overall, citing April data, Alphaliner counted 348 containerships deployed between Asia and Europe, representing a total capacity of 5.45 million TEU, which is an increase of 10.4 per cent compared to April last year.

Source Shipping Gazette