Maersk upgrades Salalah-Mombasa feeder

   The shipping company Maersk Line has more than doubled the capacity on its Mombasa Express service from its Salalah hub to Mombasa, Kenya, while improving its frequency to around five days from nine days previously. 
   Subsidiary Safmarine already provides two vessels and Maersk has added three more, increasing the number of ships on the shuttle to five, with a current average capacity of 2,497 TEUs. Two of the vessels were transferred from other Maersk Africa services, the Juist Trader from the carrier’s Asia-West Africa FEW1 and the Belgica from its Asia-East Africa Mashariki Express. 
   Round voyage time on the Mombasa Express has increased from 19 days to 26 days but the port rotation remains exclusively between Mombasa and Maersk’s strategic offshore Middle East hub at Salalah, outside the Straits of Hormuz. 
   According to Maersk Line’s schedules, the carrier plans to add a sixth vessel to the service in late January, which would further improve the average frequency – to four days. 
   The Mombasa Express is one of two Maersk loops that serve this specific port pair; the other being the five-ship Masiika Express, averaging 2,492 TEUs, which feeds both Mombasa and Dar es Salaam weekly from Salalah, continuing thence to provide a second spoke from Salalah to Maersk’s Mideast Gulf hub in Dubai. 
   The Masiika rotation is Sharjah, Dubai, Salalah, Dar es Salaam, Mombasa, Salalah and Sharjah.
   Maersk has nine other loops connecting with its two East Africa feeders at Salalah. They radiate worldwide to a surprising degree and include MECL1, average 4,314 TEUs, with a non-stop 14-day transit to New York, subsequently also calling Charleston and Norfolk. — ComPair Data, Ben Meyer and Francis Phillips