Ahead of the launch of the reshuffled alliances in April 2017, the shipment services provider CargoSmart said that the new combinations will include many direct route changes, both dropped routes and newly added routes, across the major trade lanes.

After the alliance service adjustments, over 150 port pairs will be dropped from the Asia-Europe trade and over 180 port pairs will be dropped from the trans-Pacific trade.

In the meantime, the alliances will add more new port pairs in the network. Namely, over 200 new port pairs will be added on the Asia-Europe trade, while over 50 will be added on the trans-Pacific trade.

The three mega alliances, OCEAN Alliance, THE Alliance and 2M, are dropping 6 ports that used to be part of the 2M, CKYHE, G6, and O3 networks and they are adding 8 new ports in the Asia-Europe trade. Overall, they will be dropping 22 ports and adding 19 ports on the Asia-Europe, trans-Atlantic, and trans-Pacific trades.

After reviewing the new alliance routes and port coverage, CargoSmart said that 60% of the routes on the Asia-Europe trade lane will have faster average transit times than before, 5% will have the same transit times, and 35% will have slower average transit times.

Looking at the service changes of the top trade routes, CargoSmart found that the alliances will offer fewer services in the top five Asia-Europe port pairs and the services will have fewer sailing days in a week. These port pairs include Shanghai to Hamburg, Shanghai to Rotterdam, Ningbo to Hamburg, Ningbo to Rotterdam, and Shanghai to Antwerp.

“Shippers may need to adjust their shipment patterns and even the shipment routes in their supply chain to match with the latest alliance route networks,” CargoSmart said.

The services provider further informed that it expects “many more changes to come for carriers and alliances to adjust schedules as they go into service, and for there to be ongoing adjustments.”