15.06.00
This year container transport on the North Atlantic will grow by 6.6 percent to 4.8 million TEU. Growth will be mainly in westbound traffic, which will increase by eight percent. "This reflects the export strength of the EU countries, particularly Germany," emphasizes Adolf Adrion, manager of Hapag-Lloyd Container Line.
In recent months this swift expansion has meant that shipping lines have not always been able to provide European exporters with adequate ship capacity when needed. Along with its Grand Alliance partners, Hapag-Lloyd is contributing to overcoming these bottlenecks by providing a new service structure, faster vessels and an optimized turnaround.
From August 2000 the consortium will offer five services: the Gulf Atlantic Sprint Service, Gulf/Mexico Service, Pacific Atlantic Express, Butterfly north (US East Coast) and Butterfly south (US South Atlantic, Gulf). The partners will deploy over 30 modern containerships, a third being provided by Hapag-Lloyd. Each service will offer one departure weekly to serve various transhipment hubs in Europe and America. Ports called at in Europe will be Antwerp, Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Le Havre, Rotterdam, Southampton and Thamesport. In Germany, three of these services will be handled in Bremerhaven and two in Hamburg. "Customers from Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Germany will thus now also have a direct link via Hamburg to North America," explains Adrion. For Hamburg this means volume growth of almost 100,000 TEU annually. The vessels will be handled by Hamburger Hafen- und Lagerhaus AG.
The Grand Alliance, the leading consortium in international liner shipping, comprises in addition to Hapag-Lloyd the shipping lines Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK), Japan, Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), Hongkong, Malaysian International Shipping Corporation (MISC), Malaysia and the British-Dutch P&O/Nedlloyd. The consortium operates on the major East-West shipping routes, offering customers a total of 17 liner services between Europe and Asia, Europe and America as well as America and Asia via the Pacific. The partners deploy over 100 modern containerships in these services.
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