Business | Schumpeter

How to stop the commoditisation of container shipping

The two biggest carriers chart radically different routes

Mar 9th 2023

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”