The Gemini Cooperation diverted two US-flag vessels in a trans-Pacific service away from China due to that country\u2019s retaliatory port fees, with one of the alliance partners warning of a multimillion-dollar hit that carriers face on US-flag ships because of the fees.<\/p>\n
Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd advised customers on Tuesday that two US-flag ships in their jointly-operated TP7\/WC5 service will no longer call Ningbo. This week\u2019s voyage of Hapag-Lloyd\u2019s\u00a0Potomac Express<\/em>\u00a0will discharge westbound cargo for China in Busan, South Korea, and then be transshipped on another ship. The Denmark-flagged\u00a0Maersk Luz<\/em>\u00a0will carry outbound freight from Ningbo to South Korea\u2019s Kwangyang port, which will then be loaded on the\u00a0Potomac Express<\/em>.<\/p>\n Next week\u2019s voyage of the\u00a0Maersk Kinloss<\/em>\u00a0will also discharge westbound China cargo in South Korea for transshipment on an unidentified ship, with eastbound cargo from Ningbo being shipped on a Gemini shuttle ship.<\/p>\n The service switch-up comes as\u00a0China\u2019s recently unveiled port fees on US-flag ships\u00a0went into effect on Oct. 14, the same day as similar US port fees took effect on Chinese-built ships and carriers. While China has exempted US-flag ships built in China from the fees, both of Gemini\u2019s affected ships were built in South Korea.<\/p>\n China plans to charge US-flag, non-Chinese vessels $56 per net ton, approximately similar to what the US is levying. Based on their net tonnage, each of the Gemini ships would incur a $2.5 million charge.<\/p>\n Hapag-Lloyd looks to adjust<\/strong><\/p>\n Stuart Sandlin, Hapag-Lloyd\u2019s North American president, said Wednesday at the Virginia Maritime Association trade conference in Norfolk that the carrier\u2019s five US-flagged, South Korean-built ships would face a total of $125 million in Chinese port fees annually. The US-flag international fleet can also carry commercial cargo to and from China, in addition to any government or military cargo for other Asian countries. Sandlin said Hapag-Lloyd is now looking at how to split up that business to avoid the fees.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a US-flag group, and we have a non-US-flag group, and that makes it a lot more difficult because of the current geopolitical situation,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re working to see how we actually manage through that.\u201d<\/p>\n There are currently 57 ships in the US-flag international fleet, according to Sea-web, a sister company of the\u00a0Journal of Commerce<\/em>\u00a0within S&P Global. Those US-flag ships made 163 calls globally year to date. The US-flag\u00a0Matson Waikiki<\/em>, which called Shanghai on Tuesday, faces a $1.7 million fee.<\/p>\n Among US-flag carriers, CMA CGM\u2019s APL division runs the only fleet solely built in China.<\/p>\n Source: JOC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Gemini Cooperation diverted two US-flag vessels in a trans-Pacific service away from China due to that country\u2019s retaliatory port fees, with one of the alliance partners warning of a multimillion-dollar hit that carriers face on US-flag ships because of the fees. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd advised customers on Tuesday that two US-flag ships in their …<\/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":[88,84],"class_list":["post-3383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-container-liners","tag-maritime"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383","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=3383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3384,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions\/3384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}