Maersk boosts Colombo hub

   The shipping company Maersk Line has dropped the westbound Port Said hub call from its Asia-Europe AE1 loop, adding two new calls: eastbound at Colombo; and a first port call at Zeebrugge.
   The Japan/China-North Europe 8,504-TEU loop, which sails Thursday outbound from Tanjung Pelepas, opearates with 10 Maersk ships in a 70-day round voyage.
   The Tanjung Pelepas-Zeebrugge transit time is 19 days.
   The AE1 loop’s revised rotation is Kobe, Nagoya, Yokohama, Ningbo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Yantian, Tanjung Pelepas, Zeebrugge, Felixstowe, Rotterdam, Bremerhaven, Colombo, Singapore, Nansha, and Kobe.
   It is noticeable that eastbound Maersk calls only Colombo, Singapore and Nansha en route to Japan and its Bremerhaven-Singapore transit via Colombo is only a couple of days longer than the shorter comparable distance non-stop westbound.
   Besides the 8,504-TEU AE1 express loop to North Europe and Asia/Japan, Maersk has two separate loops connecting Colombo to North Europe and Asia (the 4,208-TEU ICON and 5,278-TEU FM3) and its 10-ship, 4,329-TEU MECL2 loop connects through to the U.S. East and Gulf coasts.
   Locally, FM3 connects Colombo with Pipavav, Mumbai and Karachi plus Port Kelang, while ICON adds Chennai.
   The role of MECL2 is to provide a link with key hubs at Algeciras and Port Said en route to Colombo from New York, Savanah, Houston and Norfolk. Inbound to Colombo MECL2 also calls Djibouti and Dubai. — ComPair Data, Ben Meyer