Cargo Business Newswire

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Top Story

Mega-alliance forms in Far East-Europe trade

Six major container-shipping lines have announced the formation of a mega-alliance in the Far East-Europe trade that will include more than 90 ships in nine services calling over 40 ports in a continued trend of industry partnerships and consolidation in the face of depressed global freight rates and over-capacity.

The G6 Alliance members will be APL, Hyundai Merchant Marine, and Mitsui O.S.K Lines. Grand Alliance members are Hapag-Lloyd AG, Nippon Yusen Kaisha and Orient Overseas Container Line.

“This is a milestone agreement that significantly improves service coverage in the Asia-Europe market,” the carriers said in a joint statement.

“We will offer sailing frequencies and direct coverage that compete with anyone in the market,“ they said.

The new alliance is scheduled to take effect by April 2012 with seven joint services operating between Asia and Europe, two services to the Mediterranean, and is to include a direct Far East-Baltic service with calls at Gdansk, Poland, Gothenburg, Sweden, and trans-shipment in Singapore.

The G6 member lines said they would deploy vessels with capacities up to 14,000 TEUs, including ships that are scheduled for delivery over the next year-and-a-half.

The nine joint services will include multiple weekly calls at Singapore, South China, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Hong Kong Shanghai and Southampton, the lines said.

Ports of call will also include Le Havre, Antwerp, Bremerhaven, Thamesport, the Bohai Bay ports of Dalian and Xingang, Ningbo, Qingdao, Xiamen, Kaohsiung, Cai Mep, Japanese ports, Colombo, Jeddah, and Port Said.

Larger scale container-shipping alliances have been a reported industry trend during a period of slowed, and bumpy, global trade growth heading into 2012’s first half, including the recent announcement of a significant trade lane partnership between the second and third-largest liners in the world: Switzerland’s Mediterranean Shipping Company and France’s CMA CGM.