The end of the container cartels – Why Maersk and MSC are breaking their alliance

Singapore The steel box of the Swiss shipping company MSC floats almost silently over the deck of the “Mogen Maersk”. The 399 meter long freighter moored in Malaysia’s port of Tanjung Pelepas the day before. In the world’s largest port of the Danish shipping company Maersk, he is to take frozen pork, New Zealand apples, T-shirts for the fashion chain Zara and other things on board.

With a muffled clatter, an 80-ton crane maneuvers the dull yellow box onto one of the 17 stacks of containers lined up next to each other on the ship before the four gripping tongs of the lifting device are released. A few minutes later, the Swiss steel box rests peacefully between containers of the same size belonging to the Danish shipping line Maersk and its German subsidiary Hamburg Süd – a picture that will probably no longer exist in two years’ time.