4 January 2023 (Lloyd's List) - MSC has added three secondhand ships to its fleet to further secure its position as the largest operator of containerships. The company embarked on a buying spree from mid-2020 during which it purchased 263 boxships. The latest additions will see MSC’s vessel fleet reaching a combined slot capacity of almost 4.6m teu, which is around 9% greater than its nearest competitor—Maersk— according to Alphaliner data. MSC’s latest vessel purchases comprise the Norddeutsche Vermogen-owned panamax Northern General (IMO: 9344708). This 4,294 teu capacity ship was completed in 2008 by Hyundai Mipo Dockyard. No price has been disclosed for this deal. The Geneva-based company has also purchased two feeder max units comprising the 2,800 teu capacity Carpathia(IMO: 9253038) and the 2,478 teu Buxcontact (IMO: 9235828). The former, 2003-built, vessel was purchased from MPC Container Ships for a reported low-$20m while Buxcontacthas been purchased from Claus-Peter Offen for an undisclosed price. MSC’s secondhand containership purchases since August 2020 have a combined capacity of circa 1m teu, according to Alphaliner. “The armada acquired is larger in size than a carrier like HMM, currently the world’s eighth biggest, with a fleet of 0.82m teu,” the analyst said. “In just over two years MSC has purchased a mind-blowing 263 secondhand container vessels of all sizes, an unprecedented event in the history of container shipping. The cooling freight market of the last weeks has apparently not deterred the Geneva-based carrier from continuing its buying spree.” MSC overtook Maersk as the world’s largest containership operator in January 2022 and since then has added a total of 321,500 teu of slots, comprising secondhand ships and 83,600 teu of capacity provided by newbuilding tonnage. Its fleet capacity is now around 379,000 teu (9%) larger than that of its partner in the 2M Alliance, with Maersk having actually removed 61,700 teu of fleet capacity during 2022. Other liner operators which have added significant slot capacity in the past year include Zim which grew by 29% between January and December 2022, mostly via chartering in additional tonnage, according to Alphaliner’s analysis of global containership fleet operators. Percentage-wise, the Haifa-based liner operator was the fastest-growing carrier and added around 120,000 teu of capacity to its fleet. Evergreenexpanded fleet capacity by some 12.5% which was provided by 20 newbuildings with a combined slot capacity of 217,500 teu. Cosco Group, which includes OOCL, saw vessel capacity decline by 2.1% in the same period while Ocean Network Express and HMM also saw their respective fleets reduce, by 0.8% and 0.4%.