A reorganisation of shipping services to New Zealand is under way in the wake of the takeover of P&O Nedlloyd by Maersk and the takeover of CP Ships by Hapag-Lloyd. The global mergers created more powerful shipping companies but in this part of the world they precipitated the break-up of a shipping alliance and an overhaul of many shipping routes. The changes have ramifications for rail freight, coastal shipping and every port in the country.

“It’s a guessing game,” said Paul Nicholas of the Shipping Federation. The biggest group breaking down is the ANZ alliance, which ran the big 4100 container ships eastward to Europe and a “westabout” service to Europe. The alliance consisted of P&O Nedlloyd, CP Ships, Hapag-Lloyd, Hamburg Sud, CMA CGM and Marfret. “They were a nice happy family till Maersk came along and bought P&O,” one observer said.

Maersk does not generally work in alliances and competition regulators wanted P&O out of alliances in order to approve the merger. The result is that the fleet of 10 big ships that was threatening to move from Auckland to Tauranga is breaking up. Seven are in the Maersk/P&O group and three in the Hapag-Lloyd/CP Ship group.

Maersk/P&O announced on November 15 that it would run two services westward to Europe and a service eastward covering the east coast of North America. Details of the latter will be finalised in the next few weeks.

The big surprise is that Hamburg Sud is thought to be going it alone in competition with the merged Hapag-Lloyd.CP Ships group. The German line was a force in New Zealand in the early days of containerisation but it lost its profile inside the ANZ alliance, observers said. Hamburg Sud is expected to run a service eastward to Europe. It is expected to be a similar route to the 4100s eastabout service but fortnightly, rather than weekly.

Hapag-Lloyd/CP Ships is expected to travel eastward to Europe in partnership with others. It has announced a westward service, which will be weekly and supported by 12 ships capable of carrying between 2000 and 2500 containers. The service will start in February.

CMA CGM is expected to join Hapag-Lloyd/CP Ships.

Ports are still trying to work out what it means for them because not all of the port calls are settled on the new routes. One school of thought is that a greater number of shipping services will replace the bulked-up alliance with the big ships and they are likely to call at more ports. This would be bad for rail, which was looking to carry freight to big hub ports as the bigger ships called at fewer ports and concentrated on principal client Fonterra. Exporters could be winners if the competing shipping services increase the shipping capacity to this market, which seems likely.

The opposing view is that some of the newer, smaller services resulting from the break-up of the alliance will be less frequent and use poorer-quality vessels. Vessels coming to New Zealand need more plugs for refrigerated containers and the 10 big ships of the ANZ alliance had extra plugs fitted.

Source: The

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