Having surrendered the liner crown to Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) in early 2022, Maersk is now under growing pressure from the two carriers immediately behind it.   Consultancy Linerlytica expects COSCO to overtake Maersk by 2028, while CMA CGM is already closing rapidly on second place and has a substantially larger orderbook than its Danish rival.      The latest shift comes after COSCO added another 18 newbuildings totalling around 280,000 teu, pushing its overall orderbook to 1.89m teu, equivalent to 52% of its current 3.67m teu fleet, the highest orderbook-to-fleet ratio among the world’s top 10 carriers.   COSCO disclosed this week that its latest package comprises 12 LNG dual-fuel 22,000 teu ships at Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding and six 3,200 teu wide-beam feeders at Huangpu Wenchong, worth a combined RMB20.27bn ($2.99bn). It brings COSCO’s containership contracting this year alone to 48 ships, around 676,800 teu and approximately $8bn of investment.

MSC, meanwhile, has moved decisively clear at the top. When it overtook Maersk in early 2022, both companies controlled slightly more than 4.2m teu. MSC has subsequently added several million teu while continuing to maintain the industry’s largest newbuilding programme.

Maersk’s response is now beginning to change. As Splash reported last month, the carrier appears to have abandoned one of the defining elements of its strategy this decade: keeping its fleet broadly capped between 4m and 4.4m teu.   Its operated fleet has already climbed above 4.7m teu, while management accompanying its second-quarter results said Maersk would “ensure that we have the capacity to grow”. That represents a significant shift for a company that spent much of container shipping’s most profitable period stressing that newbuildings would principally replace older tonnage.   Linerlytica calculates Maersk’s annualised fleet growth since 2018 at just 2%, compared with 11.7% among key competitors.      The problem is that Maersk is now trying to accelerate after the ordering cycle has already moved sharply against buyers.

The global containership orderbook has reached a record 14.84m teu, equivalent to 43.1% of the existing fleet, following COSCO’s latest deals.

Alphaliner analyst Jan Tiedemann told Splash last month that Maersk had been chartering “very aggressively”, which he saw as evidence the group mistimed the newbuilding market. “I would say that Maersk has got its timing wrong,” Tiedemann said. “They have ordered large newbuildings too late and too few, and they need one or two dozens more.”   Others are more cautious about chasing rivals into an already swollen orderbook.

Drewry managing director Philip Damas argued Maersk’s previous restraint leaves it less exposed to the overcapacity expected from late 2027 onwards and suggested the carrier could instead buy vessels cheaply during the next downturn.   Andy Lane of CTI Consultancy similarly warned that around another 25% of today’s global fleet is due to hit the water during 2027-28, potentially at a time when a number of today’s disruptive elements – notably the Red Sea shipping crisis – ease up.