Evergreen, Maersk deploy 'slow steaming' to two more services

EVERGREEN Line is to extend the time it takes for its China Europe service to complete one round trip by seven days - from nine to 10 weeks.

In addition, a 10th ship will be added to the service - the 6,332-TEU Ever Elite - to join the nine 7,024-TEU ships already on the service, according to an Alphaliner weekly newsletter.

"The Ever Elite became a surplus ship further to the seasonal capacity reduction on the Evergreen's China-California TPS service, with the five 6,300-TEU units replaced by 4,200 TEU units in October," said the report.

In a related development, Maersk Line and Safmarine have stretched from seven to eight weeks their Far East-South Africa service (Safari Loop 1) and an eighth ship of 5,000 TEU has been added to the service.

The service rotation for the Safari Loop 1 remains unchanged, with port of calls at: Shanghai, Ningbo, Yantian, Tanjung Pelepas, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Port Louis, Tanjung Pelepas, Hong Kong and back to Shanghai.

The newsletter said 28 long-haul services have been "stretched" over the past six months by the "extra slow steaming" technique to realise additional fuel savings.

"So far, extra slow steaming has allowed to keep active an extra 160,000 TEU of capacity which otherwise would have been left idle if the fuel oil price had not surged. The idle fleet capacity is thus 10 per cent lower than it should be without extra slow steaming," said the newsletter, which adds that the idle fleet has now surpassed the 1.5 million mark.

(Source: www.schednet.com)