In International Shipping News 18/11/2016
THE Alliance will deploy a fleet of more than 240 modern ships in the Asia/Europe, North Atlantic and Trans-Pacific trade lanes, including the Middle East and the Arabian Gulf/Red Sea.
THE Alliance, a shipping partnership made up of Hapag-Lloyd, “K”Line, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Nippon Yusen Kaisha and Yang Ming, has announced details of the Middle East services it plans to offer from April 2017.
THE Alliance will deploy a fleet of more than 240 modern ships in the Asia/Europe, North Atlantic and Trans-Pacific trade lanes, including the Middle East and the Arabian Gulf/Red Sea, according to The Maritime Standard.
THE Alliance will include UASC in the coming months if regulatory agreement to its merger with Hapag Lloyd goes ahead and will offer a dedicated service that will cater for customers in the Middle East, connecting the key ports of China, South Korea and South East Asia with Dammam, Jubail and an as yet unnamed Arabian Gulf hub port.
Most industry commentators expect THE Alliance’s Middle East hub to be either Jebel Ali Port in the UAE or Sohar Port in Oman.
Jeddah will be a key Red Sea hub on a number of services linking the Far East and Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia and the Middle East.
The service between Asia and the Middle East has provisionally been named AGX and will have a port rotation covering Pusan, Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, South China/Hong Kong, a South East Asia hub, Arabian Gulf hub, Dammam and Jubail.
The EC 5 service linking South East Asia and North America will also transit via the Suez Canal and will have a Middle East Gulf hub port call.
The service network of THE Alliance is expected to cover more than 24 ports in Asia including ten Chinese and five Japanese ports with direct calls as well as 20 ports in the US and Canada, six North European and 13 Mediterranean ports, six ports in the Middle East and six ports in Central America/Caribbean.
Source: The Arabian Supply Chain
