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Hapag-Lloyd will likely use its $4.2 billion takeover of Zim Integrated Shipping Services as the springboard for a significant expansion of its intra-Asia business through Zim’s Hong Kong-headquartered affiliate Gold Star Line.

Hapag’s existing intra-Asia coverage is limited to a series of slot charters with other shipping lines. It also utilizes intra-Asia services established by its Gemini Cooperation partner Maersk, which had several regional carriers including MCC and Sealand Asia before being consolidated within Maersk.

By comparison, Gold Star has a network of 20 liner services operated by 40 owned and chartered ships totaling 100,000 TEUs serving Asia, India and South Africa. But they are also China-centric, linking ports such as Shanghai and Ningbo to specific Southeast Asia countries including Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand while also connecting China with India, Africa and the Middle East.

There is no or very little coverage to markets such as Japan, Taiwan or within the Southeast Asia region.

The gaps in Gold Star’s extended Asia and regional coverage give Hapag-Lloyd tremendous scope to expand its Asia network to those countries either through new services or adding ports on existing Gold Star services, Dafni said Friday. He said Gold Star’s network growth was restricted partly due to parent company Zim’s trade priorities and Israeli ownership.

Alphaliner, in its newsletter this week, said Hapag-Lloyd’s takeover of Gold Star Line will help the German carrier to “enlarge its Asian footprint.”

Improved connectivity, faster transits expected

Aside from new services, Dafni said growth would probably also come from significant cost savings through the elimination of costly feeders and slot charters.

Gold Star’s extensive intra-Asia services will feed cargo into Hapag’s mainline hub-and-spoke Gemini Cooperation network with Maersk, offering Southeast Asia and regional exporters improved connectivity with more destinations and faster transit times. Similarly, import volumes via the Gemini network will increase volumes from the main Asia hubs to neighboring countries.

“Feedering will shift from being a cost for Hapag-Lloyd to becoming a profit and revenue generator as third-party cargo shifts to its Asia services,” Dafni said.

Hapag-Lloyd and Gold Star Line said it was premature to comment on what would happen to Gold Star under new ownership.

The Zim deal “includes Gold Star Line, but no decision has yet been made about what will happen to the brand. It is simply too early to talk about it,” a Hapag-Lloyd spokesperson told the Journal of Commerce.

A senior source close to Gold Star Line said it was “too early to evaluate the impact.”

“We are still learning about the deal and waiting for the relevant approvals,” the source said.

Details please refer to the JOC news.

Source: JOC

The Ocean Alliance and Ocean Network Express (ONE) will remove some ships and consolidate US port calls in their jointly-operated trans-Atlantic network. The move follows an uneven year in the trade, with US exports to Europe up strongly but Europe’s exports to the US slowing.

Ocean Alliance partner CMA CGM said Friday its trans-Atlantic network will change effective in April. The new network, CMA CGM said, will provide the US East Coast with “stronger coverage [and] reinforced frequency” and better leverage CMA CGM’s US and European terminals.

The biggest change will be the end of the “Unity Bridge” service between major Northern European ports and the ports of Charleston and Savannah. Unity Bridge, which operates with four ONE ships and one Evergreen Marine vessel, will make its last westbound departure from Le Havre on March 16.

The south Atlantic US ports will instead be included on the rotation for the higher-capacity Liberty Bridge service, which currently calls the ports of New York-New Jersey, Norfolk and Baltimore.

The new Liberty Bridge service will drop Baltimore as of the first westbound sailing from Southampton on March 27. Charleston and Savannah will be added after the Norfolk call.

The new trans-Atlantic network comes after the Ocean Alliance and ONE revised their one-year-old vessel sharing agreement filed with the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) on Feb. 6 to consolidate their north and south Atlantic networks into a broader North American trans-Atlantic service.

The new agreement will see seven ships deployed in the revised trans-Atlantic network, compared with the 11 ships the carriers deployed under the separate north and south Atlantic networks. ONE will go from providing four ships to the soon- expiring south Atlantic network to two ships under the revised trans-Atlantic network.

Cosco and OOCL will also remove a ship, providing two to the new network. Evergreen will also remove a ship, providing one to the new network.

Details please refer to the JOC news.

Source: JOC

The container ships from Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd will be escorted through the Red Sea by warships from Europe.

When Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd are to send their first Gemini container ships through the Red Sea, the ships will be protected by warships. These will be European naval vessels stationed in the region.

Hapag-Lloyd confirmed this in a written response to ShippingWatch after the two container shipping companies announced on Tuesday that they would be sending two of their ships through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal from mid-February.

Until now, container ships have sailed south of Africa on their way between Asia and Europe due to the risk of armed attacks from the Yemeni Houthi movement.

On westbound voyages, the Gemini route ME11 will be served by the ship Albert Maersk, while Astrid Maersk will handle eastbound voyages, according to a press release from the two shipping companies.

Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd do not wish to comment further on the security situation in the Red Sea.

Several European countries have warships in the waters in and around the Red Sea as part of the EU’s naval operation Eunavfor Aspides. The operation’s mandate currently runs until February 28 this year, and the goal is for the warships to protect civilian shipping from armed attacks.

The US Navy is also present with a number of warships in the area around the Red Sea.

Source: SHIPPINGWATCH

The container line has no intentions of sailing through the Arctic, where navigation is dangerous and puts pressure on the environment, according to CEO Søren Toft.

Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), the world’s largest container carrier, denies having plans to operate via the Arctic region.

In a post on LinkedIn, the company’s chief executive, Søren Toft, writes that MSC does not wish to use the passage north of Russia known as the Northern Sea Route.

“Our position at MSC is clear. We do not and will not use the Northern Sea Route,” Toft writes in the post, referring to the intensified debate on the Arctic.

He justifies MSC’s rejection of Arctic shipping on the grounds of uncertainty and environmental concerns.

”Safe navigation cannot be assured. The risks for crews remain too high. And increased traffic would put additional pressure on fragile ecosystems and local communities,“ writes Toft.

In addition, according to Søren Toft, MSC does not need to sail through the Arctic.

”Our fleet and network allow us to transport our customers’ cargo safely and reliably around the world without doing so,” he writes.

Russia and China in particular are eager to sail via the Northern Sea Route. The possibility of using the passage remains limited, but as climate change causes the ice to melt, sailing via the Arctic is becoming more accessible to merchant ships.

Source: SHIPPINGWATCH

Following successful test voyages, Maersk is back in the conflicted region with a service of 14 ships connecting the Middle East and India with the US East Coast.

Maersk is now resuming operations through the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait with all ships on its so-called MECL service, the carrier has informed ShippingWatch and announced broadly in a press release on Thursday morning CET.

Specifically, this is a service connecting the Middle East and India with the US East Coast. Currently, a total of 14 ships are sailing on Maersk’s MECL service south of Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

They have been doing so since the beginning of 2024, when most shipping companies redirected their ships away from the Red Sea after the Yemeni Houthi movement carried out several armed attacks on merchant ships in the area.

However, the route south of Africa is significantly longer and can add up to 14 days to voyages from Asia to Europe.

Maersk has informed ShippingWatch that the recently announced return will free up capacity, as the ships will sail shorter distances, and the shipping company’s MECL service will therefore consist of only 12 ships by the end of the first quarter.

In recent days, violent protests in Iran have prompted the US to threaten a possible military response. This was followed by Iran warning of harsh retaliation against US bases. In response, the US and the UK withdrew military personnel from their bases in Qatar, among others, yesterday afternoon.

Maersk emphasizes that the shipping company is prepared if the situation in the Middle East deteriorates.

“.Maersk has contingency plans in place should the security situation deteriorate, which may necessitate reverting individual MECL sailings or the wider structural change of the MECL service back to the Cape of Good Hope route,” the shipping company writes.

“The safety of crew, assets, and customers’ cargo remains the highest priority.”

 

The Maersk Detroit also departed from North Charleston on Jan. 10 and will be the first eastbound vessel to use the route through the Suez Canal.

“All subsequent voyages will follow this route,” writes Maersk.

However, a full-scale return may still be a long way off.

In December, Maersk’s head of Northern Europe, Ole Trumpfheller, told the German media outlet Deutsche Verkehrs-Zeitung that it will take up to six months to reconfigure the shipping company’s routes between Asia and Europe.

Johan Sigsgaard, product manager for Ocean at Maersk, further described in a market update this week that a return will cause disruptions, especially for container shipping companies.

“There is no doubt that there will be added volatility to supply chains once container liners begin the shift back to East-West transits through the Red Sea, just as we saw when the industry started sailing via the Cape of Good Hope,” he explained, adding:

“So the acceleration of vessel arrivals into Europe means overstocking is a distinct possibility.”

Gratitude to the Suez Canal

Rumors of Maersk’s possible return to the Red Sea began circulating as early as November.

A rather strange sequence of events unfolded after the shipping group’s chief executive, Vincent Clerc, visited the chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, Osama Rabie.

After the meeting, the authority announced on social media platform X that Maersk and its competitor CMA CGM would return to the area at the beginning of the following month.

However, Maersk and its alliance partner Hapag-Lloyd then sent a correction to several media outlets, stating that no timeline had yet been set for when Maersk would return to the Red Sea.

Now, however, it appears that the Suez Canal Authority was simply a step ahead of events. The cooperation between Maersk and the important maritime canal is seemingly intact and, according to Maersk itself, has played a significant role in making a return possible.

“The strategic partnership between Maersk and the Suez Canal Authority has played a key role in the planning of the return,” the shipping group wrote today, Thursday, continuing:

”Collaboration with the Suez Canal Authority and other strategic partners in the region continues to be critical to ensure that the structural change of the MECL service and any next steps in a gradual trans-Suez return happens in a way that ensures the safety of the operations and safeguards predictability and stability for customers.”

Thursday’s announcement also emphasizes why it is important for Maersk to return to Suez:

“The route through the Suez, the Red Sea, and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is the fastest, most sustainable and most efficient way to serve customers with transport between Asia and Europe.”

Details please refer to the news.

Source: SHIPPINGWATCH

It will take two to three months to resume sailing through the Red Sea and Suez to avoid bottlenecks in the ports, says the Hapag-Lloyd chief exec.

No timetable has yet been set for the resumption of shipping through the Suez Canal, but when shipping does resume, it will be gradual.

This was stated by Rolf Habben Jansen, chief executive officer of Hapag-Lloyd, the world’s fifth-largest container shipping company, during a teleconference with the company’s customers on Thursday, according to international news outlet Reuters.

However, there will be a transition period of 60-90 days to adjust logistics and avoid congested ports.

Shipping companies have been taking the longer and more expensive route south of Africa since November 2023 due to attacks on traffic in the Red Sea by the Houthis in Yemen.

Source: SHIPPINGWATCH