CORRECTION: MOL, APL reinstate peak-season Seattle sailings

CORRECTION: MOL, APL reinstate peak-season Seattle sailings    Thursday’s Shippers’ NewsWire should have said that two of the carriers of the New World Alliance — MOL and APL — will reinstate the TP5 peak-season transpacific service connecting Yantian, Hong Kong and the port of Seattle.
   Alliance partner Hyundai Merchant Marine will not be involved in the link.
   “The TP5 peak-season service calling Seattle is a joint MOL and APL service,” said Anastasia Kontos, spokeswoman for MOL. “It is not, nor was it last year a The New World Alliance service.”
   The frequency of the TP5 service this year has not been finalized and details of the fleet for the service have not been announced.
   “We have confirmed some ad hoc sailings,” a carrier executive said. “We are in the process of reviewing that.”
   The first sailing for the TP5 service is expected to be the 3,054-TEU “MOL Discovery” from Hong Kong June 21.
   This means that, in addition to the 10 New World Alliance Asia/U.S. weekly services, MOL and APL will operate the TP5 link to and from Seattle, while MOL and Hyundai Merchant Marine will run a separate PCX service to and from Oakland and Tacoma.
   Neither the TP5 not the PCX service will call Los Angeles-Long Beach, according to the carriers’ published schedules.
   The dedicated Seattle container service TP5 was operated in last year’s peak-season as a safety valve because of the congestion of Los Angeles and Long Beach.