Liner consortia were born with containerization. They are operating agreements between ship-owners. Each member can load the cargo he has booked aboard any of his partners’ ship and load aboard his ships the cargo his partners have booked. They are different from pools and conferences, although they have inherited some features from pools. But they are quite different from conferences which are basically tariffs agreements. We have to distinguish between two main kinds of consortia; joint marketing consortia and separated marketing consortia. Consortia change ship-owners management because of the new framework of reference they create for profit concern. Generally speaking we can consider consortia are a collective mean to improve productivity.