Evergreen starts Singapore/Durban shuttle

Evergreen starts Singapore/Durban shuttle    Evergreen Marine is starting a weekly dedicated Singapore/Durban shuttle service in mid-April. COSCO Container Lines and Hamburg Sud will also each provide a ship on the new service according to unconfirmed reports.
   The new “Far East Express” service will use four ships averaging 1,670 TEUs and will commence with the departure of the vessel “Uni-Promote” from Singapore April 23. The transit time from Singapore to Durban is 11 days and 13 days in the opposite direction.
   In a related development, Evergreen is dropping outbound calls from South Africa to Asia on its weekly Asia/Africa/South America “ESA” service. The new Singapore/Durban shuttle service will help alleviate problems the “ESA” service has been experiencing due to congestion at Durban, according to a spokesman for Evergreen.
   The “ESA” service uses 10 ships of about 2,700 TEUs, and has a revised port rotation of Hong Kong, Kaohsiung, Singapore, Port Louis, Durban, Cape Town, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santos, Singapore, Hong Kong and Kaohsiung. Lloyd Triestino, COSCO, Hamburg Sud, NYK and Nile Dutch Africa Line also have space on the “ESA” service.