Danish container shipping line, Maersk Line has announced that it will adjust its Asia Europe services in an effort to keep the services sustainable amongst a climate of rising costs.

Driven mainly by the rising cost of fuels, Maersk Line will adjust its  AE5, AE7, AE2, and AE8 to reduce capacity and increase efficiency.  The changes will see a reduction in space by 2,000 forty-foot equivalent units per week whilst keeping all corridors served in the network.

Specifically, the changes Maersk Line have announced will see the suspension of the AE5 service, whilst retaining services to Kaohsiung through AE8.  AE7 will see its sailing speed adjusted from July 8 when the Ella Maersk will depart from the Port of Rotterdam and sail to Bremerhaven, Algeciras, Tangier, Tanjung Pelepas, and Yantian.

Both AE2 and AE8 will have their rotations changed, AE2 will visit the ports of Busan,Dalian, Xingang, Qingdao, Kwangyang, Shanghai, Bremerhaven , Rotterdam, Felixstowe, and Salalah.  AE8 will serve the destinations of Shanghai, Ningbo, Kaohsiung, Yantian, and Tanjung Pelepas as well as Valencia, Dunkirk, Southampton, Gothenburg, Aarhus, Bremerhaven, and Rotterdam.

Maersk Line has said that the revised rotations will offer customers a reduction of four days in transit times between South Korea and ports in North Europe. Also, cargo for the ports of Dalian, Xingang, and Qingdao will arrive and depart one day earlier than our current schedule.

Despite the changes, Maersk Line has said that given that the AE strings will continue to serve the same corridors as today, customers would not experience any major changes.

Source: Maersk Line

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 8:16 pm and is filed under Sea Freight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.