Shipping
ONE, HMM AND YANG MING FORM PREMIER ALLIANCE
September 9, 2024
Ocean Network Express (ONE), HMM (HMM) and Yang Ming Marine Transportation (Yang Ming) announced that they will continue to cooperate closely under the new alliance name Premier Alliance, effective for five years from February 2025.
The new alliance members said they will cooperate on mainline services across the major East - West Tradelines: Asia - North America West Coast, Asia - North America East Coast, Asia - Mediterranean, Asia - North Europe, and Asia - Middle East.
The new five-year container alliance has also already teamed up with MSC for a slot exchange agreement.
ONE, HMM, and Yang Ming are currently members of THE Alliance along with Hapag-Lloyd. The German line, however, announced its intention to depart the shipping alliance and start a new long-term operational collaboration with Maersk in February 2025 called "Gemini Cooperation."
Maersk and MSC announced the 2M alliance was also coming to an end.
"We are very pleased to announce that our strategic partnership with HMM and Yang Ming in the East-West trades will be further continued. The close network collaboration that exists between the three companies will be further strengthened and enhanced under this new collaboration starting from February 2025," said Jeremy Nixon, CEO of ONE, on the new collaboration and ONE's business outlook going forward.
"Collectively, this new tripartite alliance will offer strong, reliable and highly dependable end-to-end direct port container services to its customers on both the Transpacific and Asia-Europe trades," he added.
The 2025 Transpacific trade service products had been introduced earlier by ONE in March 2024.
The new alliance said that, in continuation of this announcement, a comprehensive update for all services for the major trade lanes will be announced separately.
The partners also announced that they would partner with MSC on the Asia—Europe trade with a slot exchange agreement across nine services as MSC establishes its plans to stand alone outside of the 2M alliance.
The new slot exchange cooperation will involve nine services, and through this, ONE aims to offer more extensive direct port coverage with frequent sailings in the Asia - North Europe and Mediterranean trade lanes.
"We are very pleased to announce this new strategic partnership with MSC, who is the leading carrier in the Asia - Europe trade. Collectively, the Premier Alliance and MSC will be able to offer a very capable and extensive network of end-to-end port services to its customers from February 2025," Nixon said.
"We look forward to this new cooperation with MSC and both collaborating on our respective joint operational expertise and combined network synergies," he added.
With the slot exchange cooperation with MSC, ONE noted that it will provide a broader range of networks to serve our valued customers.
"We are very pleased to continue alliance cooperation with ONE and Yang Ming, which has proven a long-standing partnership among three lines until now and well into the future," said Kyung Bae Kim, CEO of HMM.
HMM said it will continue to provide a wide coverage service to its customers, including HMM's independent services.
Dr Feng-Ming Tsai, chairman of Yang Ming, for his part, said: "The continuous collaboration with HMM and ONE not only reflects the deep trust and shared vision among the three companies within the industry but also underscores our unwavering commitment to delivering great value and broad coverage for our customers."
