Alliance as a Promising Form of Liner Shipping Business of Russia

Abstract

It has already been three years when 7 out of 8 global leading liner shipping companies (majors) left Russia’s market. This demise was prompt and well-coordinated. A bit later 4 other liner companies out of top-20 and top-30 abandoned Russia. Nonetheless, Russian transport and logistics business overall managed to survive and by summer 2022 had already seen carriers from China, Turkey, OAE, and Singapore as well as Russian companies entering the market. It has been revealed that as of today 10 Russian liner companies handle national foreign trade. Such actors overall run almost 60 ships (predominantly in time-charter) with relatively low capacity (around 45 thousand TEU) rendering service 1-2 times a month. Should majors return to the Russian market national companies might face daring problems. Thus, the authors believe that creating an alliance might be a solution. Such process might be grounded in the Soviet experience (yet with some alterations). However, building the liner alliance logically presupposes mutual business concessions. As for the state it is worth rendering organizational and financial back-up to the members of the alliance.