THE 2M alliance, comprising Maersk and MSC, will not be calling Southampton
at the end of March after it announced it will drop the call at
Britain's second largest container gateway by the Asia-Europe AE1/Shogun
service the carriers jointly operate.
A spokesman for Maersk said:
"The reason for withdrawing the Southampton call was because we could not
offer reliable service with the number of port calls in the rotation. Thus, in
order to improve our service quality, we decided to take the call out."
The last 2M vessel to call at
Southampton will be the 19,500 TEU MSC Diana, which is set
to depart Colombo on 28 February and, according to Maersk's schedule, arrive at
Southampton on March 21, reported London's Loadstar.
The spokesman confirmed that this
would end the line's direct services into the port. "We will offer a
service into Southampton using a third-party operated feeder."
Maersk said that "until further
notice" Southampton-bound cargo would be carried on feeder vessels out of
continental ports to Felixstowe and trucked from there, or shippers could book
cargo on the recently launched feeder service between Rotterdam and Bristol.
In December last year, Maersk and
European feeder specialist BG Freight Line jointly launched a
weekly string between the two ports, deploying a 1,000-TEU vessel, which was
said to be attracting interest from a "wide range of trades, including
forest products, alcohol and retail".
Source : HKSG.
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