Grand Alliance container shipping lines Hapag-Lloyd, NYK and OOCL plan to merge two transpacific services into a single loop, a move regarded by experts as a temporary seasonal adjustment.

This merger of the NCX and CCX services to form the new CCX service will result in a 3,700-TEU reduction in capacity each week from the trade, reports AXS-Alphaliner News.

This comes as the peak transpacific season was reported to have been flat this year on the back of a housing crisis in the US and a falling US dollar which has curbed the spending power of US consumers.

The new service said the CCX that used to connect Ningbo and Shanghai to Los Angeles is closed in its current form. The Ningbo-Shanghai-LA direct link will still, however, be provided as Ningbo and Shanghai are being added to the NCX service, which also calls at Dalian, Xingang and Qingdao, as well as the South Korean port of Busan.

It said that in spite of adding Ningbo and Shanghai to the original NCX pattern, the New CCX will continue to deploy five ships, as was the case with the NCX, although they will be bigger with 5,300- to 5,900-TEU containerships joining the new CCX.

The weekly average capacity of the new CCX service is 5,100 TEU, down by 3,700 TEU from a combined 8,800 TEU for the NCX and CCX services, according to AXS Alphaliner data.