Grand Alliance starting new Asia/North Europe loop

Grand Alliance starting new Asia/North Europe loop The Grand Alliance of Hapag-Lloyd, MISC Berhad, NYK and OOCL will next week start a new Asia/North Europe service called EU5, while also making changes to two existing services in the trade.
   The first sailings of the weekly EU5 are scheduled for week 16 westbound and week 20 eastbound. The service will operate with eight vessels of about 5,500 TEUs on a rotation of Amsterdam, Hamburg, Southampton, Singapore, Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen, Singapore and back to Europe.
   Meanwhile, the carriers will cease calling at Xiamen on the EU3 and Ningbo on the EU4.
   “These changes reflect our commitment to responding to the needs of customers due to the growth of the Chinese mainland market,” the four carriers said in a joint statement. “The newly established EU5, together with service improvements in EU3 and EU4, will enhance schedule reliability and help to better meet customers' needs in a fast-growing market.”
   The Grand Alliance controls 13 percent of the available vessel capacity in the Asia/North Europe trade with four weekly services offering a total of 28,190 TEUs per week, according to the April World Liner Supply reports of ComPair Data (www.compairdata.com), American Shipper’s affiliated database for global liner services.
   The participation of Malaysia’s MISC Berhad in the Grand Alliance is limited to the Asia/Europe and Mediterranean trades.