The growing concentration of the container business in the Gulf of Guinea has reached a critical threshold. A study by the International Transport Forum (ITF), an organization affiliated with the OECD, reveals that just two operators—Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and APM Terminals, a division of the Maersk Group—handle 67.5% of container traffic between Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria.
MSC’s acquisition of Bolloré Africa Logistics in December 2022 for €5.7 billion consolidated a structure in which the boundaries between stevedoring, shipping agency services and ocean freight have become virtually blurred. Vertical control of the logistics chain along the West African coast is becoming increasingly pronounced in maritime calls.
Four shipping lines—MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd—accounted for nearly 80% of port calls in the region in 2024, a substantial increase from the 54% recorded a decade earlier. MSC alone controls one in three port calls in the area. This level of consolidation, together with more than $1.6 billion in recent investments committed by MSC and APM Terminals in regional terminals, is prompting the ITF to recommend governance frameworks and coordinated port-pricing policies among the states of the Gulf of Guinea to contain the negotiating imbalance.
This restructuring of trade in West Africa has a direct impact on the operations of the Canary Islands port system. The dominance of major international alliances at final discharge hubs reinforces the role of the terminals in Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife as neutral facilities for intermediate transshipment, bunkering and offshore ship repair. For the archipelago’s shipping agents, shipyards and port-service providers, the tightening of the African market around two vertically integrated giants requires adapting operational capacity to the demands for rapid fleet turnaround and cost efficiency at port calls set by their parent companies in Geneva and Copenhagen.
MSC and APM Terminals: West African duopoly reshapes mid-Atlantic flows was first published on canarymaritime.com.
