Box shipping lines slowly add vessels, expand service rotations

SIGNS are emerging of carriers adding vessels and port calls in response to capacity constraints as world trade picks up again following a period of idle shipping and service cutbacks.

The most notable being Maersk Line, the world's biggest, which is revising port rotation of its US east coast-Central America 'South Atlantic Express' (SAE) service by adding a New York call and another in Norfolk.

The port rotation will be extended by one week from two to three weeks with the addition of the 1,730-TEU Marie Schulte in February, reports AXS-Alphaliner News.

The amended port rotation is: Savannah, Wilmington (NC), Norfolk, New York, Norfolk, Miami, Puerto Cortes, Santo Tomas de Castilla and Savannah.

CMA CGM started offering a North European feeder service from January 13 dubbed the 'FAS Denmark' that links Hamburg to Fredericia, Halmstad, Copenhagen and Szczecin by deploying one chartered vessel, the 658-TEU Electron.

Mauritius-based United Africa Feeder Line (UAFL) has added a third ship to its Pakistan-UAE-East Africa service, the 1,388-TEU Concord that joins the two 1,684-TEU vessels that already ply the route.

The port rotation for this service is Karachi, Jebel Ali, Zanzibar, Mutsamudu, Longoni, Tanga, Mombasa, returning to Karachi.

Finally, India's Chennai-based Caravel Logistics has purchased the 585-TEU Christian Russ that was built in 1994 from Ernst Russ and renamed her Caravel Pride.

She is expected to be deployed on the Indian coastal services of Caravel Lines, the NVOCC division of Caravel Logistics. This Caravel Lines service calls at ports in Mundra, Cochin and Tuticorin. "Caravel adds to the half-dozen of carriers offering cabotage container services between Indian ports," said Alphaliner.

(Source: www.schednet.com)