Evergreen reinstates Far East/Med service

Evergreen reinstates Far East/Med service    Taiwan-based liner carrier Evergreen is reportedly renaming the recently cut Far East/Mediterranean leg of its restructured UAM pendulum service between the Far East, Mediterranean and United States.
   Last week, it emerged that Evergreen was cutting the Far East/Med link from the UAM and joining the transpacific leg with China Shipping's ANW1 service to form a new single service that Evergreen calls PNW (China Shipping has retained the ANW1 moniker).
   That left a gap for Evergreen between the Far East and Mediterranean which, according to maritime news service Alphaliner, will be filled with a separate Far East/Med service called FEM, a name Evergreen previously used for its service on the same trade. Evergreen suspended its former FEM in 2007 when it introduced the standalone UAM pendulum.
   The port rotation of the FEM will be what it was before the service was incorporated into the UAM: Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Yantian, Tanjung Pelepas, Colombo, Ashdod, Alexandria, Taranto, Genoa, Barcelona, Valencia, Taranto, Port Said, Jeddah, Colombo, Tanjung Pelepas, Kaohsiung and Qingdao. Calls at Taipei, Osaka and Tokyo on the UAM will be dropped.
   The service will use nine 5,300- to 5,600-TEU ships formerly deployed on the UAM.
   Alphaliner is also reporting that Evergreen will use smaller ships on its TPS transpacific service between the Far East and U.S. West Coast. The service has been using five 6,000-TEU vessels, according to ComPair Data, but the line will replace those with five 4,200-TEU ships previously employed on Evergreen’s NUE service. The transatlantic leg of that service was suspended in September, freeing up the vessels. The vessel switch reduces the capacity on the service by 30 percent.