CASE BACKGROUND
This action arises from a years-long alleged conspiracy by the world’s dominant standard dry shipping container manufacturers to restrict supply, fix prices, and suppress competition for critically needed standard dry shipping containers. These non-refrigerated containers are used to transport goods nationwide and across the world and are the most common container used in the shipping industry.
Defendants—the largest standard dry shipping container manufacturers in the world — together control approximately 95% of the world’s production of these containers. Beginning no later than November 14, 2019, they allegedly engaged in a concerted scheme to artificially inflate the price of these containers by agreeing to limit their production, despite high demand levels and a shipping crisis during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Defendants allegedly carried out the conspiracy in secret through in-person meetings, emails, and text exchanges, and even via written agreements. As further alleged in the complaint, they agreed not to build any new manufacturing facilities, to limit the hours employees could work on factory production lines, and, ultimately, to place a quota on the number of standard dry shipping containers they produced. Defendants allegedly monitored compliance through video surveillance at their factories, backed by the threat of financial penalties managed by a fund they established for any conspirator that fell out of line, despite knowing this conduct violated competition laws.
As a result of this alleged conspiracy, the price of standard dry shipping containers more than doubled, while defendants reaped extraordinary profits. Consequently, plaintiff Daybreak Express, Inc. and other members of the proposed class of indirect purchasers of standard dry shipping containers paid inflated prices for these containers.
Defendants were indicted for this alleged unlawful conduct by a grand jury in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in October 2025 and again through a superseding indictment issued on January 22, 2026, unsealed to the public on May 19, 2026.
