The members of the Ocean Alliance (CMA CGM, COSCO, Evergreen, OOCL) and THE Alliance (Hapag-Lloyd, MOL, NYK, K Line, Yang Ming) have unveiled their final port selections for the new east-west services starting in April.
Both alliances already published rotations of their new services in November, but still had to make some final choices, especially for the UK.
The Ocean Alliance members have chosen Gdansk as their Baltic hub for the North Europe-Far East ‘NEU1’ service. So far, the Polish port is served with two Far East services, the G6 ‘Loop 7’ and the 2M ‘AE- 10 / Silk' loop.
The ‘NEU1’ (branded as ‘LL1’ by OOCL) will be the largest Far East loops in terms of capacity as it will deploy 11 ships averaging 20,000 teu, comprising six newbuildings of the OOCL HONG KONG type (21,100 teu) and COSCO's five 18,980 teu flagships (CSCL GLOBE and sisters). Their European calls will be limited to Felixstowe, Rotterdam, Gdansk and Felixstowe.
The alliance reshuffles turn out especially well for London-Gateway, which attracts four loops of THE Alliance (two Far East-Europe loops and two transatlantic loops). They will be the first east-west services for the DP World-operated terminal, although five CMA CGM 12,500- 13,800 teu ships deployed on the current 'FAL 23’ service started to call at this terminal in December (the seven other ships deployed on this O3 service by UASC and COSCO continue to be handled at Felixstowe). The two THE Far East-Europe loops go at the expense of Felixstowe, which sees its Far East calls from the carriers concerned reduced from five to three.
This is only partly compensated by the fact that the new Ocean Alliance ‘NEU1’ will make a double call.
Of note, the Ocean Alliance members will have one Far East service - the ‘NEU3’- calling at both Felixstowe (second North European port of discharge port after Antwerp) and Southampton (last North European loading port).
THE Alliance will spread the UK calls of its five North Europe-Far East loops over London-Gateway (2) and Southampton (3). This alliance includes K Line and Yang Ming, who are presently using Felixstowe as UK port along with COSCO and Evergreen.