KOREA's Hyundai Merchant Marine's (HMM) expansion plan in ordering fourteen 22,000-TEU ships, is incompatible with market stability, declares London's Drewry Maritime Research.

Also astonishing to the research house is HMM's plan to deploy the Asia Europe Express (AEX) using old and comparatively tiny panamaxes of 4,700 TEU in April. 

"The AEX ships would be the smallest deployed on the route that is usually reserved for ultra large container vessels with faster transit times to Europe," said Drewry 

Alphaliner says calls at Rotterdam, Hamburg and Felixstowe being used as the carrot to shippers.

"The two developments appear to be connected. HMM has two years left to run on a slot-charter agreement signed in 2016 with 2M carriers Maersk Line and MSC and presumably sees the new ships either as a bargaining chip to continue that partnership as it will have more to bring to the table, or to leverage full membership of another carrier group, or in the worst case scenario to have sufficient means to operate independently, building on the custom generated by the AEX service," says Drewry.