The carrier typically works in concert with sister line Maersk Line on the trade, but didn't specify if that would be the case with the three new services, which it is calling WAF11, WAF12 and WAF13.
All three services connect the Med hubs of Algeciras and Tangiers with various ports in West Africa, providing transshipment links to Asia, the Americas, the Middle East and Indian Subcontinent.
'The changes have been made in the interests of providing our global customer base with improved transit times and reliability,' said Dirk Geens, Safmarine's Africa trade director. 'Increasing the number of services overall has not only allowed us to reduce the number of port calls on some of the existing West African services, but it will also give us greater flexibility when it comes to handling volume overflows.'
The southbound rotations for the new services are:
' WAF 11: Algeciras, Tangiers, Lome and Onne.
' WAF 12: Algeciras, Tangiers, Abidjan and Cotonou.
' WAF 13: Algeciras, Tangiers and Dakar.
'For example, transit times from Algeciras to Onne have decreased from 21 to 14 days and from Algeciras to Cotonou,' the company said.
