New Maritime Alliances and Competition in a New Economic Environment

The recent creation of transport and information networks opens up two new and outstanding options: the interconnection of the economic areas and a new mediation between offer and demand in shipping. In this document the different ways of organization adopted by shipping companies were reviewed; their agreements, alliances, mergers and acquisitions, so as to determine the different levels of hierarchy among them. Secondly, a new port classification was proposed in accordance with the structure and development of shipping companies, together with the degree of port specialization within the framework of the recent spatial integration.