On April 1, Alphaliner counted 702 container ships deployed between Asia and North America. This armada represents a total capacity of 5.75 Mteu, which is an increase of 24% compared to April last year. Two trends can clearly be identified on this trade over the last twelve months:

1、Carriers have shifted more ships to US East Coast services

2、The joint market share of the three major alliances has dropped from 82.2% to 67.7%

The total capacity of all #ships deployed on Asia - US East Coast services has increased by 28.1% year-on-year, which compares to 20.5% growth for the fleet trading between Asia and the West Coast of North America.

Evergreen, CMA CGM, COSCO, ZIM, Maersk & MSC collectively grew their Asia-USEC capacity by 20% to 44%. ONE & Yang Ming are the only carriers operating less capacity on this trade due to a #tonnage reshuffle within THE Alliance which increased its overall capacity by 15.7%.

Maersk has surpassed CMA CGM and COSCO to become the carrier with the largest capacity between Asia and North America. Maersk is the main ship supplier on 2M's Asia-East route, which requires twice as many vessels as the US-East route due to the longer voyages.

Maersk's 38.7% year-on-year growth was due to the launch of a separate Asia-East US "TP20" route based on customer demand, as well as "TPX" and "TP28" to the West Coast. Its capacity on the Asia-North America 2M route increased by 11.5%, while additional service capacity outside 2M increased from 14,660 TEU to 201,260 TEU.

It’s worth noting that vessels operated by ZIM or SM Line are not included in the 2M figures counted above, as both carriers terminated their VSA vessel sharing agreements with MSK and MSC this month.

MSC currently only offers 25% of all classes deployed on the Asia-North America 2M service. The capacity of ships deployed as additional or stand-alone MSC services such as "Sentosa", "Chinook", "Puma", "Mustang" or "Santana" rose to an impressive 512,100TEU from 138,260TEU in April last year.

In percentage terms, Wan Hai (+130.2%) was the only carrier outpacing MSC's growth (+76.1%) as the Taiwanese carrier with its new "AA7" launched in June 2021 and 2022 In January, the "AA9" route entered the Asia-US East Coast trade.

According to the info , BAL Container Lines, CU Lines, Lihua Logistics, Transfar Shipping, and X-Press Container Line have successively opened America routes since June last year.