Consortia agreement

A consortia agreement is a joint service arrangement between liner operators that share vessels and slots on a trade lane while pricing independently, short of a full alliance or a rate-fixing conference. Members cooperate on schedules, capacity, and slot exchange to raise utilization. In the EU the practice ran under the Consortia Block Exemption Regulation (EC) No 906/2009, which exempted consortia from the Article 101(1) TFEU cartel prohibition where combined market share stayed under 30 percent and members kept a withdrawal right. The Commission let that exemption expire on 25 April 2024 and did not renew it, so consortia are now assessed under general EU competition rules.