THEANALYST

Peter De Langen

The 2M breakup in 2025, announced recently, came as a bit of a surprise, although Maersk in particular portrays it as a logical consequence of their integrator strategy. This integrator strategy implies a focus on providing a larger bundle of services than just shipping. As a consequence, Maersk needs to control its operations to be able to offer reliability and adjust to disruptions that may emerge.

Maersk has been able to grow its integrator volumes substantially; over the last years, partly because the scarcity of containers and shipping capacity made it easier to strike long term

And, of course, that other D- decarbonization, will be seeing renewed attention, with all-important meetings of the IMO’s environmental protection committee scheduled for June. Ports will have an increasingly important role to play here; vessel operations (and port calls) are an integral part of the vessel trading patterns which, in turn, impact ratings given to vessels under new IMO regulations

(“DOT”) announced that around $660 million of Port Infrastructure Development grants will be available for The fiscal year 2023. PIDP investment in projects that would: “… modernise our nation’s ports and help strengthen our supply

The U.S. DOT grants are seeing an increased focus on this “D”with electrification and shore power projects likely to garner a growing share of the funding - handled through the Maritime Administration (MARAD), an integral part of the U.S. DOT.

THE 2M BREAKUP; WHAT CAN PORTS EXPECT?

agreements with shippers. However, Maersk’s annual report shows that, generally speaking, it provides land transport for one out of three containers it transports by sea, while it provides logistics services for roughly one out of ten containers it transports by sea. Especially when it comes to land-transport, Maersk’s share is not higher than that of MSC. There are huge differences in the service provision of both carriers in different regions/ countries/ports. Therefore, it is problematic for any carrier, including Maersk, to claim to have the best overall logistics value proposition across all important markets.

All of this implies that the maritime service network of shipping lines continues to be a competitive differentiator, and perhaps even the most important differentiator for shipping lines. Given that MSC has a much larger orderbook than Maersk, and that Maersk’s capacity once 2M is over is lower than that of the two remaining main alliances, this leaves Maersk in a bit of a vulnerable position.

Unless a main shake-up of the other alliances or a take-over occurs, ports will be looking to make sure they have a strong involvement with MSC (through TIL) and Maersk (through APMT) in their respective port. This is especially relevant given their increasing focus on either a door-to-door or a more extended integrated logistics service bundle. Ports that already have terminals for both (like Rotterdam, Valencia, and Bremerhafen in Europe) may be positioned to benefit from the 2M breakup. Thus once more, port companies are reminded not to take the existing alliance structure for grantedonly change is constant!