Maersk’s P3 alliance will have lowest unit costs: SeaIntel

Monday, 27 January 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

REUTERS: Container shipping companies in the so-called P3 alliance will be able to operate more efficient than firms in the competing G6 group, maritime analysis company SeaIntel said last week.

SeaIntel said that carriers in the P3 group have on average have the youngest fleet at 6.7 years, below the 7.6 years for the G6 carriers. “This significantly younger fleet, combined with the fact that the P3 carriers will deploy significant larger vessels than the G6 carriers, means that the P3 alliance will have substantial lower unit cost than the G6 alliance,” Partner Alan Murphy from SeaIntel wrote in an email to Reuters. The P3 alliance, unveiled last June, consists of Denmark’s Maersk Line, a unit of A.P. Moller-Maersk, Switzerland-based MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company and France’s CMA CGM, the world’s three biggest container shipping companies. The G6 Alliance members are APL, a unit of Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines, Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd, Korea’s Hyundai Merchant Marine, Japan’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Nippon Yusen Kaisha and Hong Kong-based Orient Overseas Container Line. The two alliances still need approval by anti-trust authorities around the world. Unit cost for Maersk Line decreased in third quarter 2013 by 13% to $ 2,622 per forty foot container from a year earlier. According to Murphy the drop is a result of Maersk Line’s efforts to streamline its operations over the past five to six years.