Photo: VesselFinder
Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have revealed a further redesign to the Gemini Cooperation’s Asia-Mediterranean network which will see a reorganisation of the regional hub-and-spoke model.
Slated for introduction over the course of the second half of November, the move comes as the two carriers eye a full resumption of Suez transits by early next year, according to Hapag-Lloyd chief executive Rolf Habben Jansen.
“We have announced a fair number of services that already have returned, and some more are returning in the weeks to come,” he said in a press beefing last week.
“As we have said all along, if we go back, we will do it step by step and in a managed way. I’m really happy that’s what we’ve done, because we can also manage the load on the hubs and on the ports in Europe and the Mediterranean.
“So far, that has not caused too many problems, it’s been going well – if there is no change, I would expect that more or less all of our services will be back through Suez, maybe with one or two exceptions, somewhere in the course of Q1 next year,” he added.
The chief development in the revamped network is that Gemini will launch a new “transhipment hub-only” service between China and the west Mediterranean via the Suez Canal, dubbed AE18 by Maersk and SE5 by Hapag-Lloyd, featuring the following port rotation: Shanghai-Xiamen-Tanjung Pelepas-Algeciras-Tangier-Algeciras-Xiamen.
The first vessel on the AE18/SE5 will be the 13,100 teu Maersk Edirne departure from Shanghai on 22 November. The vessel is currently completing her deployment on Maersk’s standalone Asia-Mexico AC2 service.
Maersk said the new service was designed to complement its other Asia-Europe strings as well as flows from Asia to West Africa and South America with its west Mediterranean hubs taking on more relay transhipment responsibilities.
“These changes include the introduction of the new AE18 service, which, together with AE19, will consolidate our existing West Mediterranean hub coverage.
“Through our modular network concept, this will also enable product enhancements for our customers, eg shipping from Asia to West Africa and to the East Coast of Latin America,” it said in a customer advisory.
As a result, Gemini’s Asia-North Europe Loop 1 (Maersk AE2/Hapag NE1) will replace its current first European port of call of Tangier with Rotterdam, “providing an alternative and improved service from Ningbo and Shanghai to Rotterdam”.
The Asia-Mediterranean Loop2 (Maersk AE11/Hapag SE2) will also drop a call at westbound Tangier in favour of Port Said and introduce a pre-Suez call at Salalah.
Meanwhile, the recently inaugurated Asia-Mediterranean Loop4 will insert an additional call at Damietta, close to Port Said and where Gemini appears to be developing a twin-hub strategy, as well as replacing Shanghai with Nansha.
Further to which, the phased approach of returning Gemini services through Suez has been praised by liner analyst Lars Jensen, speaking at the same press briefing as Mr Habben Jansen.
“For me, it has been a very positive surprise so far, that the changeover is happening as slowly as and gradually as it is actually doing,” said Mr Jensen.
“Before the normalization started, my key hypothesis was that this would happen a lot faster, and I’m positively surprised at the restraint we see from the carriers in terms of not making it a fast transition.
“The latest numbers, at least I have, is we are roughly 30%-35% normalised across the market for the Suez routing – slightly more on the backhaul, slightly less on the head haul,” he added.