Maersk Line has entered a 10-year vessel sharing agreement (VSA) with Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) on the Asia-Europe, Transatlantic and Transpacific trades.
This comes after Chinese authorities rejected the proposed P3 Network last month.
The VSA will be referred to as 2M and it differs from the earlier proposed P3 alliance in two ways. Firstly, the combined market share is much smaller and the co-operation is pure VSA as there will be no jointly owned independent entities with executional powers.
2M aims at improving the network efficiency and allow for lower slot costs through improved utilisation of vessel capacity and economies of scale.