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Did you know that 80% of the global goods trade is transported over sea? Given the scale of human consumption, this requires an enormous number of shipping containers, as well as ships to carry them.
At an industry level, container shipping is dominated by several very large firms. This includes Maersk, COSCO Shipping, and Evergreen. If you live along the coast, you’ve probably seen ships or containers with these names painted on them.
Generally speaking, however, consumers know very little about these businesses. This graphic aims to change that by ranking the 10 largest container shipping companies in the world.
Companies are ranked by two metrics. First is the number of ships they own, and second is their total shipping capacity measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). A TEU is based on the volume of a twenty-foot long shipping container.
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.
In this dataset, Maersk and MSC are tied for first place in terms of TEU capacity. This is no longer the case, as news outlets have recently reported that MSC has overtaken the former.
Trailing behind the two industry leaders is a mixture of European and Asian firms. Many of these companies have grown through mergers and acquisitions.
At the time of writing, Maersk is Denmark’s third largest company by market capitalization. The firm was founded in 1904, making it 118 years old.
The Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has grown very quickly in recent years, catching up to (and surpassing) long-time leader Maersk in terms of TEU capacity.
The Swiss firm has increased its fleet size through new orders, acquisition of second-hand vessels, and charter deals.
COSCO Shipping is China’s state-owned shipping company. American officials have raised concerns about the firm’s expanding global influence.
For context, Chinese state-owned enterprises have ownership stakes in terminals at five U.S. ports. This includes Terminal 30 at the Port of Seattle, in which two COSCO subsidiaries hold a 33.33% stake.
Moving forward, any further Chinese interest in U.S. terminals will face an even more stringent regulatory environment. – Kardon (2021)
Evergreen is likely a familiar name, but not for the right reasons. In 2021, one of the company’s ships, Ever Given, became stuck in the Suez Canal, putting one of the world’s most important shipping routes out of commission for nearly a week.
To achieve better economies of scale, container ships are growing bigger and bigger. The following chart illustrates this trend from 1970 to 2017.
Average capacity is being pulled upwards by the arrival of mega-ships, which are ships that have a capacity of over 18,000 TEUs. Their massive size creates problems for ports that weren’t designed to handle such a high volume of traffic.
It’s worth noting that the largest ship today, the Ever Ace (owned by Evergreen), has a capacity of 24,000 TEUs. Watch this YouTube video for some impressive footage of the ship.
Bloomberg reports that shipping accounts for 3% of the world’s carbon emissions. If the industry were a country, that would make it the world’s sixth-largest emitter.
Due to the growth of ESG investing, shipping companies have faced pressure to decarbonize their ships. Progress to this day has been limited, but there are many solutions in the pipeline.
One option is alternative fuels, such as liquefied natural gas (LNG), hydrogen, or biofuels made from plants. These fuels could enable ships to greatly decrease their emissions.
Another option is to completely do away with fuel, and instead return to the centuries-old technology of wind power.
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The mainstream shaving industry no longer fits the needs of modern society. This graphic shows why it’s time to rethink shaving
The art of shaving has a history rich with transformation that dates back to ancient civilizations. That is until the 20th century when mainstream plastic cartridge razors began to flood the market.
This graphic from Henson Shaving shows how mainstream plastic cartridge razors conflict with expectations of the modern world by being huge contributors to pollution.
The data also suggests that consumers could significantly benefit from switching over to using a safety razor. Let’s dive in.
The shaving industry is dominated by several corporate entities that rake in billions of dollars every year. In fact, the majority of razors on the market today are optimized for profit rather than sustainability and affordability.
The industry was worth $17 billion in 2021 and is poised to grow by 17%, reaching $20 billion by 2030. Within this large market, the U.S. is a key player. The country imports over half a billion razors a year—more than any other country. Overall, U.S. shavers go through 2 billion razors a year, which is roughly 12 per consumer on average.
How much waste does this create?
As it turns out, quite a lot. The 2 billion razors discarded annually cover an area of 700 acres—assuming the average disposable cartridge razor (without a handle) has a dimension of about 3 cm by 1 cm. To put that into context, that’s 2,400 Olympic sized swimming pools.
The other inefficiency involves consumer wallets. While on the surface disposable cartridge razors seem more affordable, this is far from the truth. While cartridge razors have a cheaper cost up front, they become more expensive incrementally over time. In fact, most consumers do not detect this, but they may actually end up paying 5-10 times more than safety razors over their lifetime.
On the other hand, safety razors require a larger upfront investment, but become progressively cheaper over the months and years. How is this possible? A cartridge razor costs between $2-4 in most markets, while a safety razor blade is a fraction of that at around 10-20 cents. What’s more, both typically last last for an average of 7 shaves.
We can better understand the total cost of ownership associated with shaving by looking at the costs over a few years.
Note on methodology: We assume a safety razor is $100 and a blade costs 20 cents to replace per 7 shaves while cartridge razors are $10 and cost $3 to replace the cartridge. This means a daily safety razor user would incur a 20 cent cost per week while someone who shaves only twice a week would incur about a 6 cent cost. A daily cartridge shaver would incur a $3 cost per week while someone who shaves twice per week would incur a 85 cent cost weekly.
Eventually, daily shavers see safety razors become cheaper at the 35th week, while those who shave twice a week recognize the savings around week 115. But given people spend an average of 3,000 hours in a lifetime shaving, the compounding effect translates into huge cost savings for the consumer no matter how often they shave.
There are several psychological phenomena at play that shape the financial decision making behind shaving.
First the endowment effect, which is when consumers place a higher perceived value on an item they own, over something they don’t. The endowment effect states that we assign a positive psychological bias to our possessions. For shaving, this means consumers are more likely to have a positive view towards their own razor over alternatives.
Next, is the sunk cost fallacy, which suggests that people are reluctant to abandon a behavior if they have already invested time or money into it. For shavers, this may mean sticking to a substandard shaving method or product because time or money has been spent acquiring the item, thus making us reluctant to change and accept potentially better ways.
These psychological factors are part of how the large corporate shaving companies build profitable lifetime consumers—but it’s time for change.
There’s evidence to suggest the modern day cartridge razors can lead to suboptimal outcomes for your wallet and the environment at large.
The Henson razor addresses these challenges head on.
Henson Shaving is going against the grain by selling one razor for one consumer to last a lifetime.
>>>Learn more about the last razor you’ll ever buy with Henson Shaving.
In this infographic, we rank the world’s 10 largest maritime shipping companies by container capacity and fleet size.
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The gender gap in corporate America is still prevalent, especially in leadership roles. In 2021, only 8.2% of Fortune 500 CEOs were female.
There’s been a massive push to increase diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
However, it appears corporate America still has a ways to go, particularly when it comes to diverse representation in corporate leadership roles. In 2021, only 8.2% of Fortune 500 CEOs were female. Of those females, 85% of them were white.
This graphic by Zainab Ayodimeji highlights the current state of diversity in corporate America, reminding us that there are still significant gender and racial gaps.
Since 1955, Fortune Magazine has released its annual Fortune 500 list that ranks the 500 largest U.S. companies, ranked by total revenue earned each fiscal year.
For the first 17 years of its publication, there were no female CEOs on the Fortune 500. Then in 1972, Katharine Graham became CEO of the Washington Post, making her the first-ever female CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Following Graham, a few other women joined the ranks, such as Marion Sandler, co-CEO of Golden West Financial Corporation, and Linda Wachner, CEO of Warnaco Group. But apart from those few outliers, Fortune 500 CEOs remained almost exclusively male for the next few decades.
At the turn of the millennium, things started to change. Women-led companies started to appear more frequently on the Fortune 500. Here’s a breakdown that shows the number of women CEOs on the list, from 1999 to 2021:
YearFortune 500 # of Women CEOs% of Total 199920.4% 200020.4% 200130.6% 200271.4% 200371.4% 200481.6% 200591.8% 2006102.0% 2007132.6% 2008122.4% 2009153.0% 2010153.0% 2011122.4% 2012183.6% 2013204.0% 2014244.8% 2015244.8% 2016214.2% 2017326.4% 2018244.8% 2019336.6% 2020397.8% 2021418.2%
Slowly, women of color started to appear on the list as well. In 1999, Andrea Jung, the CEO of Avon, became the first East Asian female CEO in the Fortune 500. And in 2009, Xerox CEO Ursula Burns was the first Black woman to become CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
By 2021, 41 of the Fortune 500 companies were led by women—8.2% of the overall list.
While this increasing total is a clear trend, it’s important to note that women make up nearly 50% of the global population, meaning genders are still not equally represented in corporate leadership.
Along with the number of societal and cultural benefits that come with a diverse workplace, research indicates that diversity can also be financially beneficial to corporations, and enhance a company’s bottom line.
A study by the Council of Foreign Relations found that gender equality in the workforce could add up to $28 trillion in global GDP.
According to the Council of Foreign Relations, a number of policy changes are needed to help close the gender gap in the workforce, such as legislation to promote women’s access to capital and financial services, or tax credits for childcare support.
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