Maersk Line returns to Boston

The world’s largest container line made its inaugural call at the port’s Conley Container Terminal Thursday.    The ocean carrier Maersk Line on Thursday began calling at Conley Container Terminal at Port of Boston again with the arrival of the Sealand Illinois on its joint TA5/MEDUSEC loop with Mediterranean Shipping Co.
   Maersk and MSC recently began full operation of their latest vessel sharing agreement (VSA), called the 2M VSA, on major east-west trades.
   According to ocean carrier schedule and capacity database BlueWater Reporting, the 2M’s TA5/MEDUSEC, which connects the Mediterranean with ports on the United States East Coast, operates with six vessels, three each from Maersk and MSC, with an average capacity of 6,693 TEUs. The full port rotation of the service is Gioia Tauro, Naples, Leghorn, La Spezia, Genoa, Valencia, Algeciras, Sines, New York/NJ, Boston, Baltimore, Norfolk, Savannah, Charleston, Algeciras, Valencia and Gioia Tauro.
   The loop is one of only three direct region-to-region services currently calling Boston. The other two are MSC and Chilean line CSAV’s joint Ecuador Express service between North Europe, the U.S. East Coast, the Caribbean, and West Coast Central and South America and the CKYHE Alliance’s Asia to U.S. East Coast all-water AWE2 loop via the Panama Canal.
   The CKYHE Alliance is comprised of China-owned COSCO Container Lines, Hanjin Shipping of South Korea, Taiwan-based Yang Ming, “K” Line of Japan, Chinese/Taiwanese Evergreen Line.
   Deborah Hadden, port director of the Massachusetts Port Authority, said in a statement container volumes at Conley Container Terminal have increased steadily in the past several years.
   “Container volumes for 2014 were up 10-percent from the previous year for a total of 214,243 twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs,” said Hadden. “This represents the second-highest volume the terminal has ever seen, just behind 2007’s record of 220,339 TEUs. The addition of Maersk Line to the Port of Boston’s portfolio is expected to help move the Port of Boston toward a new all-time record.”