Germany was once the world’s top container shipping nation, but those days are over. Today, the title belongs to a landlocked country with no direct access to the sea, reshaping the global shipping industry.
According to swissinfo.ch, Switzerland a country without its own sea access has risen to become the largest container ship nation in the world. The previous global fleet leader, Germany, has even fallen back to third place, as the President of the Association of German Shipowners (VDR), Gaby Bornheim, said in Hamburg. China follows Switzerland in second place.
The fact that the Alpine country is now the leader in container shipping is due to a single company: the world’s largest shipping company, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), based in Geneva. In the past, it has not only made a name for itself by acquiring a stake in the Hamburg port logistics company HHLA, but most recently also as a buyer of German container ships. “They have taken on a lot of tonnage,” said Bornheim.
The result: although the gross tonnage (GT) of container ships sailing under German control has risen from 29 million to 30.2 million GT, Switzerland is now ahead with 34.7 million GT and China with 31 million GT. The GT is the measure of the total size of a ship.
According to VDR Managing Director Martin Kröger, the fact that China has also overtaken Germany is primarily due to intra-Asian transport, which China serves with many small container ships.
