Hapag-Lloyd to add South Africa to network

Hapag-Lloyd to add South Africa to network    Hapag-Lloyd will in mid-October start its first service to South Africa with a weekly service connecting North Europe to ports in South and West Africa.
   Four ships of about 1,200 TEUs will be deployed on the South Africa Express (SAX) which will start with a departure from Hamburg Oct. 15. The full port rotation of the SAX will be: Hamburg, Antwerp, Le Havre, Lisbon, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Cape Town, Dakar, Lisbon, Thamesport and back to Hamburg.
   Hapag-Lloyd said the Port of Dakar in Senegal, which the German carrier calls on its Europe/East Coast South America service, will serve as a central transshipment hub for West African ports, including Tema, Ghana), Abidjan, Ivory Coast and Lagos in Nigeria. The carrier’s agent in Dakar is Somicoa.
   “The southern and west regions of Africa represent an attractive market for container transport with considerable development potential. We will thus be serving all five continents for the first time in our company’s history,” said Adolf Adrion, chief executive officer of Hapag-Lloyd.
   To assist its network expansion, Hapag-Lloyd is planning to open its own offices in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town. Gudrun Feil has been appointed to head these offices. South Africa is part of Hapag-Lloyd’s newly established Region Southern Europe, whose managing director is former CP Ships executive Glenn Hards.