How to stop the commoditisation of container shipping
The two biggest carriers chart radically different routes
Don’t feel bad if MSC, the Mediterranean Shipping Company, is the biggest ocean-going carrier you have never heard of. It is meant to be that way. Its founder, Gianluigi Aponte, is a publicity-shy Italian billionaire, based in Switzerland, a country with no maritime borders and a culture of secrecy as deep as the ocean. His firm has taken the seafaring world by stealth. Born in 1970 with a single vessel trading between Somalia and southern Italy, msc last year overtook A.P. Moller-Maersk to become the world’s biggest container-shipping company. Yet its culture of silence remains. When its CEO, Soren Toft, spoke at a shipping jamboree in Long Beach this month, he revealed next to nothing. “We’re not going to make [talking in public] a habit,” he said gruffly.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “High risk on the high seas”
From the March 11th 2023 edition
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