Every week, our journalist Thibaud Teillard writes an editorial in the « sailing » newsletter. This week, focus on the Italian-Swiss giant MSC, which continues to weave its web in the international maritime sector.
Discreet, secret but powerful as ever. MSC, for Mediterranean shipping company, the best-known name of the family galaxy Aponte, continues to weave an absolutely prodigious global maritime web. Never in all of history has a shipowner been so powerful on the seas. And more and more on earth.
World number 1 in container, number 3 in cruise
First there is the world’s No. 1 container which weighs more than a fifth of the world’s capacity and cannot be caught up for very long years, unless it is merged between its European rivals, Maersk, CMA CGM, or the acquisition of one of them by the Chinese Cosco. In other words, science fiction.
There is the cruise shipowner, now world No. 3 neck and neck with the third American Norwegian cruise line, to which the dynamic industrial basin of Saint-Nazaire owes so much.
And then there is now the towing, with an equal entry into the world No. 1, a subsidiary of a family group, Boluda.
Port terminals, new conquest of shipowners
There are still the port terminals, the new conquest of shipowners, of which the Italian-Swiss group has become a first-class player. Certainly MSC cannot (yet) seize the ports of the Chinese Hutchison – deal of the century, calmed for almost a year by the bad will of the Chinese authorities – but it invites itself, against all odds, to Panama instead of the same Hutchison, a clever maneuver that was believed to be in the hands of the only Maersk.
Finally, there are the ferries. The major setback imposed by the Italian antitrust authorities in the takeover of Moby has frankly reduced the ambitions of the European No. 1. But the group’s subsidiary, GNV, which generates recurring losses, is massively on the offensive in the Mediterranean. With a formidable pricing policy, thanks to its Italian bis flag, it largely destabilizes the market and places French shipowners in a very worrying defensive position. Especially since the most French-speaking and Francophile of the non-French shipowners, the MSC group, has an ability to seduce and convince at the height of its scale. In France, we know it in Saint-Nazaire, Le Havre, Marseille. It is now also enough to listen to the port of Sète talk about it to take a good measure.
source : le marin ouest-france
