In 2025, the new alliance pattern of consolidated transportation has been preliminarily settled. The container shipping market is likely to experience short-term disruption in the coming weeks due to route restructuring and re-signing of cooperation agreements.

DHL Global Freight is working with different alliances and container lines to hedge the risk of disruption and price volatility during the transition period.

The company predicts that the impact of the new alliance will be felt in early February after the Lunar New Year.

Jacob Moe, Global Head of DHL FCL, said: "We expect a lot of service changes, disruptions and more in February and March as new services, new alliances and new vessels move from one alliance to another.

"All of this will come into play in the coming weeks and months," Moe said in a recent webinar.

The container shipping market is currently facing a new alliance structure consisting of three major alliances (Gemini, Ocean and Premier) and a separate alliance operated by Mediterranean shipping companies. Different alliances have different strategies and visions, and there are obvious differences in operational strategies.

While Gemini Cooperation, a consortium consisting of Maersk and Hapa-Lloyd, has focused on a hub radiation model to serve a handful of major ports, MSC has opted for the opposite strategy, seeking to establish independent services to serve many ports directly.

Jacob Moe stressed: "We think it's important to spread the services and the risks across all these alliances. We will have a clearer idea of how this all plays out in the next few months."

While capacity may be reduced when demand falls, he does not expect the new alliance to drive up costs for shippers. "There are still very few airlines with a majority of the market share, so we don't expect the alliance change to be a huge change."

However, Jacob Moe predicts that changes will take place after the Chinese New Year holiday is over: "We haven't seen any disruptions during the Lunar New Year yet - probably because a lot of airlines are still planning new networks and want to run smoothly from the start."

"But based on the latest rate changes for some major East-West trades, we expect the number of empty flights to increase in the coming weeks."