Maersk Line is being forced to pay a premium to secure scarce chartered tonnage for the Gemini Cooperation.
The Danish carrier is paying $100,000 a day to charter Sinokor Merchant Marine’s 2024-built 8,030 teu Manzanillo Bridge for two to three months, according to Linerlytica.
The vessel has just finished a three-month charter to MSC – notably, Maersk is paying $10,000 per day more than MSC.
Taiwanese operator TS Lines has chartered its newly built 7,000 teu TS Hongkong to Maersk for $99,750/day for a brief two-month transpacific deployment.
And Greek tonnage provider Euroseas disclosed on Monday it had chartered a 4,253 teu pair, Synergy Antwerp and Synergy Keelung, to Maersk for $35,500/day for a minimum three years, set to begin in May and June, after their charters to Hapag-Lloyd and TS Lines respectively end.
Euroseas CEO and chairman Aristides Pittas said: “These charters continue to demonstrate the strong demand for feeder and intermediate size vessels by liner companies, despite the possibility of potential rerouting of vessels back through the Suez Canal later in the year.
“We believe charterers are willing to secure tonnage well in advance at very firm periods and rates, driven by the tight supply of feeder and intermediate containership vessels.
“This is largely due to their very limited orderbook and the fact that a large percentage of their fleet is older than 20 years,” he added.
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MB Shipbrokers (formerly Maersk Broker) noted that post-panamax ships were almost sold out for this year and 2026. Its latest weekly report says: “Demand remains firm, and except for one or two short-term sub-lets, supply continues to be ultra-scarce, with generally very positive market conditions.”
Hapag-Lloyd, Maersk’s Gemini partner, has also made forward extensions on several feeder vessels for periods of one to three years in recent weeks, including Songa Box’s 2,592 teu Puerto Limon Express and JR Shipping’s 1,440 teu Empire.
The continuing tightness of the charter market also appeared to be having an effect on the Premier Alliance’s network plans, Alphaliner suggested today, as its three members struggle to obtain enough capacity to match their offering with those of MSC, Gemini and the Ocean Alliance.
“Taking away Hapag-Lloyd’s vessel contribution, the three [Premier] partners will be left with only 2.39m teu, down from 3.27m teu. The members of Premier have limited mean of compensating the loss in the short term, since ONE (66%), HMM (62%) and Yang Ming (83%) already contributed large portions of their fleets to THE Alliance.
“ONE will, however, very soon receive the first of numerous 14,000 teu newbuildings that will help boost the Premier fleet,” the analyst said in a research note today.
