Maersk will resume transits through the Panama Canal in May on its Ocean-Americas (OC1) service after the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) announced a slight increase in the number of permitted daily vessel transits through the drought-hit waterway.<\/p>\n
The carrier, which announced the move in an advisory Friday, has since January been using the adjacent canal railroad to transfer boxes between terminals on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.<\/p>\n
Maersk said it had been \u201cclosely monitoring\u201d the introduction of additional transit slots by the ACP in recent weeks before deciding to shift back to using the canal on its OC1 service. The first northbound canal transit will be by the Maersk Inverness about May 17, while the initial southbound transit will be made by the Spirit of Auckland around May 20.<\/p>\n
The OC1 service \u201cwill return to its pre-existing rotation that was in place prior to the current two-loop setup established with the Panama Rail connection,\u201d Maersk said. The use of the rail link \u201cwill be phased out by the end of May,\u201d the carrier added.<\/p>\n
Maersk\u2019s two-loop service involved ships operating between Philadelphia, Charleston and Manzanillo in Panama and Balboa (Panama), Tauranga (New Zealand) and Melbourne (Australia).<\/p>\n
Maersk confirmed the new rotation of the single-loop OC1 service via the canal would include calls at Philadelphia, Charleston, Balboa, Melbourne, Port Chalmers (New Zealand), Tauranga, Manzanillo, Cristobal and Cartagena.<\/p>\n
Maersk has been using the canal for its other services, a carrier spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Hapag-Lloyd and Ocean Network Express confirmed transits through the Panama Canal have been fully restored on their three Asia-US East Coast trans-Pacific services operated under THE Alliance network. That follows a partial shift back to canal transits at the beginning of this year after vessels were diverted via the Cape of Good Hope when drought-related vessel restrictions were at their toughest.<\/p>\n
Vessel slots increased<\/p>\n
The ACP as of the end of March increased the number of daily vessel slots available through the canal to 27 from 24. That followed an improvement in actual and projected water levels on the Gatun Lake, a chokepoint on the canal system, following heavy rain in the canal watershed.<\/p>\n
Drought restrictions had been imposed in the middle of last year, leading to long vessel queues with more than 100 ships waiting to transit the waterway in August.<\/p>\n
\u201cACP may also increase the number of slots offered through auction, depending on the Gatun Lake\u2019s level projections,\u201d the authority said in a statement.<\/p>\n
That comes as queue waiting times for both northbound and southbound transits for non-booked vessels are down to less than a day, ACP figures showed Friday. That is a significant improvement from February, when the average wait time for ships without bookings was five days for northbound vessels and four days for southbound vessels.<\/p>\n
Some 49 ships, including 41 that have transit bookings, were waiting to pass through the canal Friday, according to ACP data.<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Wallis, K. (2024, April 5). Maersk to resume Panama Canal transits on OC1 service as vessel restrictions ease<\/i>. Journal of Commerce. https:\/\/www.joc.com\/article\/maersk-resume-panama-canal-transits-oc1-service-vessel-restrictions-ease_20240405.html<\/p>\n Maersk will resume transits through the Panama Canal in May on its Ocean-Americas (OC1) service after the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) announced a slight increase in the number of permitted daily vessel transits through the drought-hit waterway. The carrier, which announced the move in an advisory Friday, has since January been using the adjacent canal …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[84,83],"class_list":["post-2959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-maritime","tag-us-ports"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2960,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959\/revisions\/2960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}