Although mergers typically lead to disruption and irate shippers, that has not been the case in the recent merger of Cosco and China Shipping Container Lines.

Cosco Executive Vice President Howard Finkel and JOC Senior Content Editor Alessandra Barrett discuss Cosco’s merger with China Shipping Container Lines, freight rate trends, and the biggest operational change that came out of the West Coast labor strife of 2014 and 2015.

The newly formed China Cosco Shipping Corp. aims to become the third-largest global container line by boosting its fleet by at least 50,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units to more than 2 million TEUs by the end of 2018.

CMA CGM and Cosco are leading efforts to create a new vessel-sharing alliance that could include Evergreen Line and OOCL and would shake up three of the four major east-west carrier groupings, the Alphaliner newsletter reported.

China Shipping Container Lines’ mega-ship Indian Ocean has run aground in the Elbe river roughly 19 miles from the Port of Hamburg, according to the German newspaper Die Welt.

China Shipping Container Lines has warned investors that it will make a 2015 net loss of $430 million on the back of record low freight rates and vessel impairment losses.

CMA CGM’s $2.4 billion acquisition of Neptune Orient Lines and the forthcoming merger between state-owned Cosco and China Shipping are unlikely to spur a fresh round of consolidation in container shipping, according to Drewry.

The listed entities of Cosco and China Shipping Container Lines will resume trading on Monday after being suspended for more than five months as reorganization to merge the complex web of public entities under the two groups gets under way.

Talks between state-owned giants Cosco and China Shipping will continue into the new year, the groups said in exchange filings, six months after trading in shares of their listed subsidiaries was suspended.

A U.S. Federal Maritime Commissioner said he was told earlier this week by representatives of China Shipping Container Lines and Cosco that the container lines are in the early stages of a merger.

The expected merger of China Shipping and Cosco speaks not just to the increased pressure on container lines — even state-owned ones — to become profitable, but also the political and economic changes rippling through China.

China Shipping Container Lines has placed orders for eight 13,500 twenty-foot-equivalent container ships at Shanghai Jiangnan Changxing Shipbuilding, continuing the aggressive fleet expansion began last year.

Evergreen Line this month will launch a new intra-Asia service in partnership with Cosco and China Shipping, enhancing the Taiwan carrier’s intra-Asia operations.

China Shipping Container Lines in the first quarter continued its profitable turnaround that began with a positive 2014 annual result, reporting a 305 percent increase in net profit to $40 million.

The world’s largest container ship, the 19,100 TEU CSCL Globe, sailed into the British gateway Port of Felixstowe this week to make its maiden European call in a loop that will include Rotterdam, Hamburg and Zeebrugge.

A China Shipping Container Lines (CSCL) executive has shrugged off demand forecasts predicting 3 to 5 percent market growth in the next few years that will not be enough to fill the capacity flooding into service.

As the world’s first 19,000 TEU ship sets sail on its maiden voyage on Monday, concerns are being raised that mega container ships pose a substantial risk to cargo and crew due to their sheer size and inability of supporting infrastructure to come to their aid in the event of an accident.