MSC will form standalone loops on the Asia – North America and Far East – Europe routes. MSC’s fleet apart from the 2M Alliance now stands at 733,000 TEUs on the Asia – North America and Far East – Europe routes, accounting for 33.2% of the capacity on these routes.
MSC now operates four loops on the Asia – Europe lane, up to North Europe (the 2M ‘Lion’, 2M ‘Griffin’, ‘Sentosa-Swan’ and ‘Britannia’) and three to the Mediterranean (the 2M ‘Jade’, 2M ‘Tiger’ and the standalone ‘Dragon’).
MSC’s capacity in standalone loops is to further increase in the next weeks. Its new China – Korea – Long Beach ‘Mustang’ service only kicked off on 20 July, which means that its fleet is not fully staffed yet. MSC also launched a Far East – US East Coast ‘Liberty’ loop on 8 August.
The Swiss-Italian operator’s standalone capacity on the Asia-Europe and Transpacific lanes is set to grow to 921,000 TEUs once all the ships are in place, upping its non-alliance share on these routes to 38.4%. Hapag Lloyd’s 15.4% of non-alliance capacity is currently assigned to the standalone Far East – North Europe ‘China Germany Express’ (‘CGX’). The German carrier currently also provides five 15,440 TEU ships for the AA7 Asia – US East Coast loop which is jointly operated with Wan Hai.
