GRAND ALLIANCE RESHUFFLES ASIA/EUROPE SERVICES

GRAND ALLIANCE RESHUFFLES ASIA/EUROPE SERVICES    Grand Alliance carriers Hapag-Lloyd, Malaysian International Shipping Corp., Nippon Yusen Kaisha, Orient Overseas Container Line and P&O Nedlloyd are adding direct calls at Jakarta and Xiamen as part of an extensive revision of their joint weekly services connecting Asia to northern Europe and the Mediterranean.
   From the beginning of July, the Loop 5 service will call at Jakarta, Indonesia, and include a westbound call at Malta and a new westbound call at Port Kelang. Calls at Shekou and Hong Kong are both being dropped from the rotation and transferred to another service.
   The revised rotation for Loop 5 will be Hamburg, Rotterdam, Southampton, Malta, Jeddah, Dubai, Colombo, Jakarta, Singapore, Port Kelang, Colombo, Jeddah, Malta, Hamburg, Rotterdam and Southampton.
   From early August, calls at Shekou and Port Kelang are being added westbound to Loop 3, whilst Singapore is being dropped. The new rotation will be Rotterdam, Hamburg, Southampton, Singapore, Hong Kong, Qingdao, Busan, Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Shekou, Port Kelang, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Southampton.
   From mid-August, Loop 4 will see the start of direct calls at the Chinese port of Xiamen and the ending of calls at Colombo. The new rotation of the service will be Malta, Southampton, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Port Kelang, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shekou, Xiamen, Hong Kong, Singapore, Southampton, Hamburg and Rotterdam.
   Minor changes to the arrival and departure days will be made to the Loop 1 and Loop 2 services, but the port sequences of those services remain unchanged.
   Revised transit times for all the Asia-Europe loops of the Grand Alliance are posted on ComPairSchedules, the free global shipping schedules database on the Internet, at www.compairschedules.com.
   The Grand Alliance is the largest consortium in the Asia/Europe liner trade.