The new CEO of South Korean shipping company Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) wants to improve relations with Maersk and the Mediterranean Shipping Company of the 2M alliance. For this reason, Jae-hoon Bae will visit the two companies to strengthen their ties.
Jae-hoon Bae was made CEO of HMM during March and he will now embark on his first trip abroad. Namely, he will visit Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), with the goal of improving HMM’s relations with the 2M alliance partners.
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Currently, the company has an agreement to swap container space with Maersk and MSC on trades between the Far East and US, which will expire in a year.
However, sources say that this agreement is far less than the comprehensive 2M agreement, which enables the 2M companies to work together on deployment and scheduling of up to 130 ships across several trade lanes.
Now, HMM seeks for help to handle the increased new capacity, which is expected to receive between 2020 and 2021.
What is more, HMM will receive 12 container ships of 23,000 TEUs in capacity by 2020, as well as another eight container ships of 14,000 TEU capacity each. These ships will double HMM’s capacity from 436,000 TEU to 824,000 TEU by 2021.
However, HMM will still be a relatively small player in the global container industry, while new capacity to the already over-saturated trade lanes is not considered as a welcome development.
The majority of the 23,000 TEU capacity will likely head to the Asian-European trade lane, container ship analytics firm PR News Service informed.
