Freight News, Sea

Lines reveal shape of shipping for the future

[ September 10, 2024   //   Chris Lewis ]

Ocean Network Express (ONE), HMM and Yang Ming have signed a five year cooperation deal to operate as Premier Alliance from February 2025.

It will cover services across the major East – West tradelines: Asia – North Europe; Asia – Mediterranean; Asia – North America West Coast; Asia – North America East Coast; and Asia – Middle East.

There will also be a slot exchange cooperation between Premier Alliance and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) in the Asia – Europe trade, involving nine services, which will help ONE boost its port coverage and sailing frequency.

ONE chief executive Jeremy Nixon, said: “The close network collaboration that exists between the three companies will be further strengthened and enhanced under this new collaboration starting from February 2025. Collectively this new tripartite alliance will offer strong, reliable and highly dependable end-to-end direct port container services to its customers on both the Transpacific and Asia-Europe trades.”

Many of the rotations  are based on routing via the Suez Canal. ONE says it will continue to closely monitor developments in the Red Sea, and will announce rotations via the Cape of Good Hope in the coming days.

Southampton is the UK call for Far East routes and London Gateway for IOX (Indian Ocean Express).

Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have also revealed details of the Gemini cooperation, also due to be launched in February 2025.

They said that since the two companies unveiled the new long-term collaboration in January 2024, they have been working on finalising the details of the operational collaboration which covers East-West trades.

It includes an alternative Cape of Good Hope network due to the on-going disruptions in the Red Sea. Depending on which network the cooperation will phase in, the new network consists of either 27 or 29 ocean mainliner services supported by 30 intraregional shuttle services. The collaboration will comprise either 300 or 340 vessels with either 3.4 or 3.7 million TEU total capacity, respectively.

Felixstowe is the UK call for Gemini’s Asian services, Southampton for the Transatlantic and London Gateway for the Indian Subcontinent.

Hapag-Lloyd chief executive, says Rolf Habben Jansen, said: “Reliability, connectivity and sustainability are the keywords in the networks we are presenting today, and we are pleased that we now can give our customers full transparency about how we will deliver a best-in-class ocean network so they can begin planning despite a highly dynamic situation.”

His Maersk opposite number, Vincent Clerc, added: “We are looking forward to the launch of our completely redesigned network next year, and we are happy to reconfirm that our schedule reliability target remains unchanged irrespective of which network we will phase in. We believe our collaboration will raise the bar for reliability to the benefit of our customers and set a new and very high standard in the industry.”