Sea-Intelligence (Apr 10th, 2025) – Gemini shuttles operating at 98% in February

In 30+ years of container shipping alliances, the domain of the alliances has always been exclusively on mainliner, deep-sea services, with individual carrier members operating their own feeder services. Gemini Cooperation has taken a different approach to their alliance network design, incorporating a hub-and-spoke model within their formal alliance, with fewer mainliner calls, and an increased focus on transhipment via shuttles. The Gemini shuttle network, when fully rolled out, will be quite expansive, with 28 shuttle services.

15 of the shuttle services had been launched in February 2025. Of those, 10 were deployed in Asia, 2 in Europe, and 3 in the Indian Subcontinent/Middle East. Overall, schedule reliability for the Gemini shuttle services was 98.4% in February 2025. All but two shuttle services, A04 and A09 (both deployed in Asia), had 100% schedule reliability.

That said, there are few factors to take into consideration. Firstly, the true performance test of the new alliances (and MSC’s new network) will be when they are fully rolled out in July 2025. During the roll-out phase, the first month is likely to be the least challenging, as only a small subset of vessels will be phased in to the new network, while the later roll-out months are traditionally more challenging, as many vessels are phasing in at the same time.

Secondly, we only have February 2025 scores for 15 of the 28 planned Gemini shuttle services, and while the number of arrivals for the 15 services is significant, only a small subset of European shuttles had been launched in February. Thirdly, none of the Gemini mainliner services made connections from origin to destination regions (e.g. from Asia to Europe) in February, as it takes more than a month to make such connections. The Gemini shuttles have thus “only” been feeding the mainliner services in February, and are yet to receive containers from mainliners, to be shipped to final discharge port. That said, even if it is still very early days, it is still an impressive first performance.

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All quotes can be attributed to: Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.