Shipping consultant Drewry has echoed comments made by other analysts on the potentially unwieldy nature of containershipping’s new grouping, THE Alliance.
THE Alliance was announced last Friday and comprises six carriers: Hanjin Shipping, Hapag-Lloyd, K Line, MOL, NYK and Yang Ming. It will start in April next year.
Drewry described the members of the new grouping as “orphans” and suggested there might be “too many cooks” involved. Moreover, two other carriers, UASC and HMM, could still join THE Alliance taking the number of parties involved to eight.
Lars Jensen from SeaIntelligence Consulting told Splash last week that THE Alliance will be a challenge in terms of agreeing on a network. “In order to make this succeed it will require the members to cast aside significant parts of their own specific needs in the interest of the overall good for the alliance,” Jensen said.