MSC has grown its global container shipping capacity market share by nearly ten percentage points between 2010 and 2025, doing so entirely through organic growth, according to Sea‑Intelligence.
Maersk’s market share declined slightly, by 0.9 percentage points, despite the 2017 acquisition of Hamburg Süd (which had held approximately 3% market share).
From 2010 to 2025 the top‑10 container shipping lines increased their combined market share from 55% to 86%, largely at the expense of smaller carriers outside that group.
Between 2020 and 2025 growth has been driven mainly by organic expansion, with MSC’s gains nearly equalling the combined market share losses of Maersk and COSCO.
Carriers such as Evergreen, HMM, ZIM and Wan Hai have also made notable relative gains.
Maersk has stated its strategic focus on profitability and end‑to‑end logistics, rather than on increasing market share. Information beyond this text is not available.
In its June 2025 report, Sea‑Intelligence confirmed that the consolidation in the container shipping industry over the past 15 years raised the market share of the current top‑10 lines from roughly 55% in 2010 to 86% by 2025, reflecting widespread mergers and acquisitions and alliance formation. Other analysts describe this as “extreme consolidation,” noting that newcomers now control only about 6% of global fleet capacity while established lines dominate the remaining 84%.
Mediterranean Shipping Company S.A. (MSC) is a privately held international shipping line founded in 1970 in Italy and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is wholly owned by the Aponte family and, by March 2025, operated approximately 900 cargo vessels, commanding about 20% of global container capacity.
A.P. Moller‑Maersk A/S (Maersk) is a Danish publicly traded integrated transport and logistics company known for container shipping under APM Terminals.
China COSCO Shipping Corporation Limited (COSCO) is a state‑owned enterprise of the People’s Republic of China, formed in 2016 by a merger of COSCO Group and China Shipping. Headquartered in Shanghai, COSCO provides marine transportation and logistics services worldwide.