Maritime services of container ships operators in the Mediterranean Sea

Résumé En

Maritime transport, and more specifically containerised transport, is the heart and soul of our globalised economies. Since its invention, containerised maritime transport has undergone numerous structural and organisational changes. In particular, the sector experienced a spectacular boom in the 2010s when shipowners decided to stop using the Panama Canal. From then on, there was no longer any obstacle to the construction of larger ships. The size of container ships has doubled in the space of 10 years to reach a carrying capacity of 24,000 TEU for the Megamax 24 class. This structural evolution of container ships has led to changes in the world's containerised maritime networks and thus to impacts on the different maritime spaces.In this presentation, after presenting the evolution of the container ship fleets, we will study the impact on the maritime network within the Mediterranean Sea and on the ports of call in this sea. We will approach the subject from the angle of direct inter-port relations before zooming in on the strategies of global carriers in their choice of ports of call and service offers.To carry out these various analyses, we use the AIS signals emitted by the ships, which we cross-reference with a database of ships from IHS Fairplay. This database provides us with information on the technical characteristics of the ships. We will make a comparison between the years 2012 and 2022.