Two Alliances Combine Loops for Slack Season

The Grand Alliance and the New World Alliance will combine two all-water services from Asia to the U.S. East Coast as part of their combined capacity cutbacks of about 4,000 20-foot containers during the slack winter season, the groups announced on Thursday.

The temporary reductions, which are designed to cut capacity and sustain recent rate increases during a period of lower seasonal demand, will take effect from Dec. 1 and last for around 18 weeks.

The Grand Alliance carriers -- Hapag-Lloyd, NYK Line and OOCL -- will jointly operate the New York Express (NYX) with the New World Alliance, which includes APL, Hyundai Merchant Marine and MOL, as they did last winter.

As of Dec. 2 the NYX, which is an NWA service, will temporarily replace the GA’s South China East Coast Express (SCE) during the winter program.

The NWA will provide six ships and the GA three vessels. APL, HMM and MOL will each withdraw one ship from the service. In the newly combined loop, the Grand Alliance will provide three 3,800-TEU vessels out of nine ships for 18 weeks.

In addition to a recently added Yokohama call, the NYX port coverage will be enhanced with an additional call at Shekou. The revised port rotation is Shanghai, Ningbo, Shekou, Yantian, Hong Kong, Kaohsiung, Panama Canal, Manzanillo, New York, Norfolk, Savannah, Jacksonville, Miami, Manzanillo, Panama Canal, Balboa, Yokohama and Pusan.

The GA will operate its North & Central China East Coast Express (NCE) during the winter season with a new call at Kingston. The Grand Alliance will provide seven 4,150-TEU vessels and Zim Integrated Shipping Services, which is not a member of the alliance, will provide one 4,150-TEU vessel.

The new port rotation of the NCE will be as follows: Pusan, Qingdao, Ningbo, Shanghai, Panama, Kingston, New York, Norfolk, Savannah, Kingston, Panama and back to Pusan

The fourth member of the Grand Alliance, MISC Berhad of Malaysia does not operate on the all-water trade with the United States and is therefore not part of this agreement.

The NWA will also continue to operate its APX (Atlantic Pacific Express) with eight, 4,000-TEU vessels during the winter season on the following port rotation: Shanghai, Yantian, Hong Kong, Kaoshiung, Manzanillo, New York, Norfolk, Savannah, Manzanillo, Yokohama, Busan, and back to Shanghai.

Contact Peter T. Leach at pleach@joc.com.