The top container shipping companies in the world, Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) and CMA CGM, have reached an agreement to share vessels on the transpacific route to help cut costs.
Explaining the reason for the co-operation on the Asia-US West Coast route, Vincent Clerc, vice-president of Pacific route management for Maersk Line, said: "Rates have not supported our cost to serve on different products in the Pacific. We felt that a partnership of this sort would not only enable us to address our cost structure, but also to provide a dynamic enhanced product for our customers, without adding any capacity on the market."
Under the agreement, the three lines will share services on three strings of five vessels each between Asia and North America. They will replace Maersk Line's TP5 and TP8, MSC's New Orient Express and CMA-CGM's Yang Tse Service.
The first string will deploy five vessels of 8,000 TEUs each, with Maersk operating four ships and CMA-CGM one. The port rotation will be Yantian, Kaohsiung, Shanghai, Qingdao, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. The first eastbound port call will start from Shanghai on April 14 and the first westbound call from Los Angeles on April 29.
The second string will deploy five 8,000 TEU vessels, four to be operated by MSC and one by CMA-CGM. The port rotation will be Dalian, Xingang, Shanghai, Ningbo, Los Angeles, Oakland and Dalian. The first eastbound call will start from Dalian on April 7 and the first westbound call from Long Beach on April 27.
The third string will redeploy five 4,000 TEU vessels operated by Maersk Line under the US flag and will call the ports of Kwangyang, Busan, Kobe, Shimizu, Nagoya, Yokohama, Los Angeles, and Oakland. MSC and CMA-CGM will participate in this string through a slot agreement. The first westbound call will start from Los Angeles on March 25 and eastbound call from Kwangyang on April 12.
All the strings will offer an improved eastbound product with shorter transit times out of Northern China and vastly improved westbound products adding non-restricted corridors into Kaohsiung, Hong Kong and Yantian for both import and export cargo.
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