Most of the goods that we use in our everyday lives – like the very smartphone you are using to read this article – were manufactured in another country, loaded into a Conex shipping container, and shipped across the ocean on a massive container ship and unloaded at a shipping container port near your city.
It should be no surprise that nearly 80% of all consumer goods are transported by sea by a small number of major international shipping container companies. Major shipping companies that host fleets of hundreds of ocean going vessels and the innumerable steel cargo containers that they carry on transoceanic voyages to the consumer markets in the USA and other countries. buy new shipping container
You have likely seen photos of enormous freight liners carrying Conex containers with names such as Maersk, COSCO Shipping, and Evergreen being unloaded at coastal cargo ports. This article is about these major container shipping companies and a little background on the history of the 5 biggest shipping companies.
The size of the largest container shipping companies are measured according to two criteria:
!) The number of container ships in the company’s fleet
2) The company’s volume of TEUs* – an industry term that measures the volume of goods that may be transported inside a standard 20 ft Conex container.
*Definition: twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) The twenty-foot equivalent unit (abbreviated TEU or teu) is an inexact unit of cargo capacity, often used for container ships and container ports.It is based on the volume of a 20-foot-long (6.1 m) intermodal container, a standard-sized metal box which can be easily transferred between different modes of transportation, such as ships, trains, and trucks,
Source: Wikipedia

The data used in this infographic comes from Alcott Global, a logistics consultancy. Fleet sizes are as of June 2021, while TEU capacity is from January 2022.
At the time of this article – the 4th quarter of 2022 – the latest figures show that MSC has surpassed Maersk in volume of TEU capacity. Our ranking graphic uses the metric of the number of ships in the fleet.
Rounding out our top ten list below, the top two MSC and Maersk are a number of lesser known Asian and European based shipping companies. When we examine the history behind these great freight carriers, we frequently see a common history of simple origins followed by a succession of acquisitions of other, minor regional shipping companies. Their fleet of ships and routes are absorbed under the banner of the parent company.
1) Maersk
Not only does Maersk top the list of world’s largest shipping companies, it also stands as Denmark’s number three biggest company according to market capitalization. The A. P. Moller-Maersk Group is a Danish conglomerate with the shipping branch known most commonly as Maersk.
History
The A.P. Møller-Mærsk Group originated as the Danish shipping company Dampskibsselskabet Svendborg founded in 1904 in the city of Svendborg by Captain Peter Mærsk-Møller and his son AP Meller. One of the sons of AP, Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller became the CEO of the company following his father;s passing. Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller served as the chairman of the Maersk company into his 90s and was a managing owner until the time of his death in 2006.
Mærsk provides shipping services all over the globe with operations in 374 ports in 116 different countries. In figures from 2019, Maersk employed 83,625 people; of which 18,398 were ship crew and the remaining 65,227 employees were processing and operations staff in shipping offices and port facilities.
The Maersk Line consists of over 708 shipping vessels of different sizes with a cargo capacity of over 4.1 million TEU.
Source Wikipedia
Key dates in Maersk company history
1999
Maersk made a major acquisition of Safmarine Container Lines (SCL). The South African based company had assets of approximately 50 sea vessels with a fleet of over 80,000 Conex containers The acquisition included a total of ten trades and augmented Maersk Line’s operating line of vessels and routes.
In the same year of 1999, A.P. Moller Group also acquired SeaLand Service Inc, another major international shipping container carrier. This deal increased the A.P. Moller Group fleet by 70 vessels and 200,000 Conex containers. The deal included other SeaL and Service Inc terminals, offices and agencies as well.