MSC offers Maple service without Maersk

Mediterranean Shipping Company said it will offer its transpacific “Maple” service on its own instead of together with Maersk.    MSC said it will offer its transpacific “Maple” service on its own instead of as a 2M Alliance offering with Danish carrier Maersk Line.
   On Sept. 7, MSC and Maersk had said they were going to start a new 2M service to assist shippers who saw a sudden drop in capacity when Hanjin Shipping filed for receivership and stopped booking cargo. MSC called the new string its “Maple” service, while Maersk dubbed it the TP1.
   Though the companies said they would offer the service jointly, they gave very different versions about what the service would eventually look like.
   Both agreed the service would initially have a rotation of Busan, Long Beach, Yantian, Shanghai and Busan, but MSC said the service would eventually call Prince Rupert instead of Southern California, while Maersk said the service would call Los Angeles/Long Beach.
   MSC said the loop was omitting calls during the “golden week” period around National Day in China but noted how the service is scheduled to resume with the Oct. 28 sailing of the MSC Rochelle from Yantian, calling at Shanghai, Busan, Long Beach and Vancouver.
   MSC also said the Maple is “an exclusive service – not in conjunction with Maersk.”
   Meanwhile, a Maersk spokesperson said last week, “TP1 will continue to exist. We are currently reviewing the plans for TP1 and will update customers and market in due time. In the meantime, we are deploying extra loaders according to the customers’ needs.”