Top 10 Shipping Companies in the World in 2020

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The top 10 shipping companies in the world 2020 are at the top of their game in one of the oldest industries in the world. The shipping industry is probably the most important industry in the world; if it were to collapse one day, we would struggle to even get the most basic of necessities as around 90% of the world’s cargo is transported through ship!

The largest ship in the world can store an astounding 18,000 containers, or equivalent to 745 million bananas. While the engines of the biggest ships are hundreds of times more powerful than an average, they can’t travel very fast, with a maximum speed of around 23 knots, which is the equivalent of around 23.5 miles per hour, which is why you have to wait 2 weeks for your delivery in most cases. And these ships don’t really get much of a break in between transport; it is estimated that annually, a ship travels 75% of the distance to the moon.

Pixabay/Public Domain

Working in a shipping company is not an easy job, especially if you are actually on one of the transport ships. Even in this day and age, only 10% of the ships have access to the Internet, a sobering thought for many, while 33% of the ship crews have zero means of communicating with the outside world when they’re on a ship. There are some sexist issues still pervading the industry as well, with only 2% of the seafarers being female.

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The future of the shipping industry may be at stake right now, with a major fall in demand and fall in freight rates threatening the progression of the industry. Despite these setbacks, the top 10 shipping companies in the world in 2020 have been innovative and responded to these issues, which is why they are currently at the top. To decide the biggest shipping companies in the world, we consulted Alphaliner to rank each company according to their TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit), a unit used to describe the capacity of a ship. If you want to compare this to older lists, you should head on over to top 15 largest shipping companies in the world. So let’s begin our list with number 10:

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