The Maersk–MSC Fleet Race: Could the Next Capacity Cycle Create Another Freight Rate Crisis?

For years, Maersk was the name associated with the world’s largest container fleet. Then the market changed.

MSC kept buying ships, building capacity and moving aggressively into the second-hand market. Maersk, meanwhile, moved further towards becoming an integrated logistics company rather than simply chasing the biggest container fleet.

Today, the picture is very different.

Based on current industry fleet figures being tracked, MSC is around 1,013 ships with about 164 ships on order, while Maersk is around 753 ships with about 93 on order. MSC has already built a sizeable lead.

The contrast with 2018 is striking. At that time, Maersk had roughly 600 ships compared with around 433 for MSC. The positions have effectively reversed.

Now comes the interesting part.

Reports in September 2026 indicate that Maersk is looking at expanding its container fleet, suggesting that the company may be preparing to regain more scale in the core ocean business.

If Maersk starts ordering ships aggressively again while MSC continues its expansion, the industry could enter another major capacity race.

And shipping has a long memory.

The market experienced severe pressure during the years leading up to the 2016 Hanjin collapse, when weak freight rates, excess capacity, high competition and financial pressure created a difficult environment. Hanjin eventually filed for bankruptcy in September 2016, leaving billions of dollars of cargo caught in the disruption.

The danger today is not necessarily another Hanjin. The lesson is about capacity arriving faster than demand.

Ships ordered today will not immediately enter the market. But if a large number of new vessels arrive over the next two to three years while global container demand grows only moderately, the additional capacity could put pressure on utilisation and freight rates.

Maersk itself has already warned about this problem. In early 2026, the company pointed to vessel overcapacity and the return of shorter Red Sea/Suez routes as factors that could increase available capacity and push freight rates lower.

There is another twist now: Maersk is already returning more services to the Suez Canal, with four additional Gemini services announced for the transition from the Cape route to Suez. That also releases vessel capacity because ships spend less time on each Asia–Europe rotation.

So the next few years could become very interesting.

MSC has the fleet lead. Maersk appears to be preparing to increase its ocean capacity again. New ships are coming. Suez services are returning.

If demand does not grow fast enough to absorb all that capacity, the container shipping market could see another period of aggressive competition and falling freight rates.

The big question is not who buys the most ships.

The real question is: when all those ships arrive, will there be enough cargo to fill them?

The next two to three years may provide the answer.