Maersk, CMA CGM raise capacity on WestMed loop

   The ocean carriers Maersk Line and CMA CGM have raised capacity on their weekly West Mediterranean-East Coast of North America (WestMed) loop, called Amerigo Express by CMA CGM, by increasing the size of the vessels.
   The carriers also dropped a last call outbound at Malaga, replacing it instead with an outbound call at Tangiers, Morocco.
   The carriers have replaced three of the six vessels deployed on the WestMed, increasing average ship capacity on the service by 21 percent, from 3,541 TEUs to 4,287 TEUs. Hapag-Lloyd continues to purchase slots on the service, along with Maersk subsidiary Safmarine. The revised port rotation of the WestMed is Algeciras, Malta, Leghorn, Genoa, Marseilles, Barcelona, Valencia, Tangiers, New York, Norfolk, Savannah, and Algeciras. Maersk provides four ships and CMA two.
   The switch to calling Tangiers will facilitate the transshipment of West African exports to North America, while in the other direction Maersk’s Algeciras hub is the last port of loading for all its West African feeders.
   Neither Maersk nor CMA CGM offer any other direct services that operate exclusively between the West Mediterranean and East Coast of North America. Hapag-Lloyd, on the other hand, operates two such services: first, its weekly West Med-North America MGX service, on which both CMA CGM and Maersk Line take slots, along with Hamburg Süd, Alianca, CCNI, and CSAV, and which also calls at Savannah before continuing on to Port Everglades, Veracruz, Altamira, Houston and New Orleans. Hapag-Lloyd’s second service is its joint weekly Mediterranean-to-Montreal gateway MCA loop with Hanjin Shipping, on which the carriers recently increased capacity as well (reported by American Shipper April 3). — ComPair Data, Ben Meyer