Danish container shipping company Maersk Line is making improvements to its network between Asia and North Europe, the world’s largest trade lane, by deploying its large container vessels across its five Asia – North Europe services in the network.
The company said that it has drawn on experience from the first year of operations of the 2M alliance when adjusting the network.
“We are utilizing our scale to deliver a better product. With the largest network and the deployment of an increasingly uniform fleet of ultra large container vessels, we maintain our extensive direct coverage while focusing each service towards best in class transit times to specific markets on the trade,” said Vincent Clerc, Chief Commercial Officer in Maersk Line.
Under the plan, Maersk Line intends to eliminate overlapping port pairs in order to reduce the number of direct port calls in the network and increase reliability through slower network speeds while maintaining competitive transit times through the reduction in port calls.
The carrier said that the reshuffling will focus on strengthening its products in Germany and the Netherlands, featuring market leading transit times from main Asian markets to Bremerhaven and Rotterdam, where westbound transit times are improved by as much as four days, whereas eastbound transit time between Rotterdam and Shanghai is reduced by five days, the company adds.
“Our improved network is the result of a stable, maturing alliance seeking to address current customer-felt pain points. It strengthens our commercial offering and offers shippers a stable choice in times where other alliance networks await reshuffling,” said Vincent Clerc.
The improvements to the network are anticipated to be fully phased in during the third quarter of 2016.
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