MSC hits 500 secondhand ships in six-year buying blitz, reshapes global liner map
MSC has acquired its 500th secondhand containership since 2020, pushing its fleet to 7.4m teu and redrawing the rules of liner shipping.
Mediterranean Shipping Co has crossed another threshold that no other carrier is expected to match. The Swiss liner giant has now acquired 500 secondhand containerships since August 2020, according to Alphaliner.
The latest purchases were the 2,796 teu Calandra, bought for a reported $27m, and the 1,732 teu Fitz Roy for more than $26m. Alphaliner described the buying campaign as unique in container shipping history and unlikely ever to be matched by another carrier.
When Gianluigi Aponte’s company started raiding the secondhand market in August 2020, MSC operated around 3.8m teu. Today its fleet is approaching 7.4m teu, giving it more than 21% of global liner capacity.
The secondhand campaign initially let MSC replace chartered tonnage with owned ships. It rapidly became one leg of an unprecedented expansion strategy that has transformed the structure of global liner shipping.
Newbuildings have been equally important. MSC took only 15 months to grow from 6m to 7m teu, with 68 newbuild deliveries accounting for roughly 799,000 teu of that million-teu increase. The carrier still has more than 2m teu of additional capacity on order and has continued to be linked with further large LNG dual-fuel newbuilding programmes.
MSC overtook Maersk to become the world’s largest containerline at the start of 2022, when the two companies each controlled just over 4.2m teu. It has subsequently opened a gap of several million teu over its Danish rival.
Sheer fleet size has allowed MSC to do something none of its major competitors has attempted. Following the end of the 2M partnership with Maersk in February 2025, MSC launched its own standalone network. It retains selective slot-exchange arrangements, including with Premier Alliance carriers, but no longer relies on an alliance partner to provide the ships needed to offer a global network.
For Malta’s maritime sector, the implications are significant. MSC’s standalone network and continued fleet expansion mean the Freeport’s transshipment volumes are increasingly tied to a single carrier’s strategic decisions. Local logistics operators and bunkering firms will need to watch how MSC’s independent routing choices affect call patterns in the central Mediterranean.
The scale of MSC’s buying spree also tightens the secondhand market for smaller operators who compete for the same tonnage. With 500 ships absorbed in six years and more on order, the fleet structure of global liner shipping has been rewritten around one company’s ambition.