MSC to Reach 5 Million TEU of Boxship Capacity by End of May

MSC is the world's largest shipping firm. File Image / Pixabay

Container line MSC, the world's largest shipping firm, is set to become the first company ever to reach 5 million TEU of boxship capacity later this month.

The firm's container capacity is set to breach 5 million TEU before the end of May with the arrival of the MSC Michel Capellini and MSC Gemma, shipping intelligence service Alphaliner said in a newsletter this week.

The total is likely to move beyond 6 million TEU before the end of next year, the company added.

MSC's current capacity is 4,954,997 TEU, of which it owns 2,298,344 TEU and charters the remaining 2,656,653 TEU. The firm has another 1,661,023 TEU of capacity on its orderbook.

AP Moller-Maersk, the second-largest container line after MSC, currently has 4,129,995 TEU of capacity in its fleet.

"Unlike most other shipping lines within the top-ten, MSC's sheer scale will allow the carrier to offer attractive port pairs on all key trade lanes without joining another alliance set-up," Alphaliner said.

"Alphaliner nevertheless expects MSC to maintain selected smaller-scale partnerships on a number of trades."

In a recent interview with Ship & Bunker, MSC CEO Soren Toft discussed the reasons for the firm's recent fleet expansion.

"We didn't get carried away in the last two years, let me put it that way," Toft said last month.

"We know some of the fundamentals of shipping, and we also expected that they would sooner or later return.

"That's why we are making sure that, through the acquisitions we have done, we are in a good place, we can meet the customers' demand, we can hopefully also generate some positive returns."

The expansion in both second-hand acquisitions and newbuild orders came for a variety of reasons, Toft added.

"It's about growth," he said.

"We bought a lot of second-hand ships because there was significant demand out there from customers in the COVID period.

"Then it's also about fleet renewal -- we have a big fleet, and we have to renew our fleet quite a bit.

"It's about competitiveness and costs; we need to make sure we're not just the biggest company, but the most competitive.

"And it's about replacing a number of charters, because the fact of the matter is that we can actually operate ships that we run and operate ourselves better than the traditional charters."