In early January, it was announced that Swiss-Italian owner-operator Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has usurped Maersk as the world's biggest shipping line by capacity, according to analytics firm Alphaliner. The advantage is only slight, a mere 1,888TEU out of a total 4,284,728TEU, and perhaps says more about MSC's bolstering of its 645-strong fleet with chartered vessels over the past few years, at a time when Maersk has sought to shift some of its investment towards the wider (land-based) logistics chain. Time will tell which proves the savvier policy, and Maersk CEO Soren Skou was somewhat dismissive when the subject was broached during a Bloomberg interview in December, but for MSC it completes a remarkable rise for the company founded by Gianluigi Aponte little more than half a century ago. With that has come a number of eye-catching newbuildings, such as the six-strong 23,756TEU MSC Guelsuen class (the lead vessel, delivered in 2019, was briefly the world's largest container ship) which are said to deliver an efficiency of 7.49g of CO_2 per ton-mile. MSC's commitment to improving the environmental performance of its fleet was further underlined in September last year when it was announced that Silverstream Technologies has secured a contract to supply more than 30 air lubrication systems for large container ships MSC currently has on order.
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