YANG MING, COSCO AND “K” LINE COMBINE MORE EAST/WEST SERVICES

YANG MING, COSCO AND “K” LINE COMBINE MORE EAST/WEST SERVICES

YANG MING, COSCO AND “K” LINE COMBINE MORE EAST/WEST SERVICES

   Yang Ming, COSCO Container Lines and “K” Line will combine their existing Asia/Panama Canal/U.S. East Coast “AEX” container service and their U.S. East Coast/Mediterranean “TAS3” service in March into a single Asia/U.S. East Coast/Mediterranean/U.S. East Coast/Asia “pendulum” service.
   The new Asia/U.S./Mediterranean “AUM” service will utilize 12 ships of about 3,800-TEU capacity. Yang Ming said that this will allow the carriers to save one vessel, compared to the previous two-service arrangement.
   The revised operation will allow Yang Ming, COSCO and “K” Line to provide a direct weekly service from Asia to Boston, as reported in Friday’s Shippers’ NewsWire. It will also create a direct weekly eastbound link from the port of Boston to Mediterranean ports. The port of Boston is not currently served directly by any container service in the transpacific and Mediterranean trades.
   The rotation of the combined weekly AUM service will be Tokyo, Qingdao, Shanghai, Yantian, Hong Kong, Charleston, Norfolk, New York, Boston, Valencia, Naples, Genoa, Barcelona, New York, Norfolk, Charleston, Tokyo, Qingdao and Shanghai.
   According to ComPairData, the global liner shipping database on the Internet, the service restructuring of Yang Ming, COSCO and “K” Line will not affect their present transpacific capacity. By contrast, the new AUM service will have a 70-percent higher weekly capacity than the present “TAS3” loop in the U.S./Mediterranean trade. The TAS3 service uses ships averaging 2,226 TEUs, according to ComPairData.
   A source close to COSCO in Italy said that the Chinese carrier will have a large space allocation on the AUM transatlantic service, and may terminate its smaller New York/Halifax/Mediterranean “Genyex” service, which utilizes two small vessels.
   Yang Ming and “K” Line have also recently announced the introduction of another large “pendulum” service. The “PSW-1/AES-1” service will have a rotation of U.S. West Coast/Asia/Europe/Asia/U.S. West Coast, using 12 ships of 5,500 TEUs. It will replace the current “K” Line “CALCO-A” transpacific link and the Yang Ming “Asia Express” Asia/Europe loop.
   Several other carriers have also combined single-trade services into “pendula” in an attempt to save on vessel and port costs.