Yantian Express arrives in Halifax

   The Hapag-Lloyd fire-damaged containership Yantian Express arrived at the Port of Halifax Monday and discharge operations could take up to two weeks, said Hapag-Lloyd’s THE Alliance partner Ocean Network Express (ONE) in a customer advisory.
    The ship departed last Wednesday from Freeport, Bahamas, where it had been berthed since Feb. 4 for repairs after suffering a container fire in early January while en route to Halifax from Colombo, Sri Lanka. The 7,510-TEU vessel had 3,875 containers on board at the time of the incident and 320 were a total loss, Hapag-Lloyd said.
   Discharge operations were expected to begin Tuesday morning in Halifax, ONE said.
   “Due to the complexity of the discharge operations in Halifax, it is expected that this alone could take up to two weeks,” the customer advisory reads. “Therefore, the focus of the operations in Halifax will be to expedite the delivery of cargo.”
   Any containers still without salvage and general security posted will not be permitted to move beyond Halifax. Cargo interests are responsible and liable for all costs and charges associated with their cargo, including freight, demurrage, general average security and salvage security, ONE said.
   Cargo will be delivered “in the usual way under the regular contract of carriage” for customers who have arranged salvage and general average security, according to the customer advisory.
   The Yantian Express, which is one of the ships in Hapag-Lloyd’s EC5 service from Asia to the East Coast of North America, is scheduled to call a Chinese repair yard in early August for final steel works, a Hapag-Lloyd spokesperson told American Shipper in April.