Hong Kong-based shipment services provider CargoSmart has said that the reshuffled containership alliances beginning in April will result in many direct route changes, with dropped and added routes across the major trade lanes.
CargoSmart said that more than 150 port pairs would be dropped from the Asia-Europe trade, while more than 180 port pairs would be dropped from the trans-Pacific trade. More than 200 new port pairs would be added on the Asia-Europe trade, while in excess of 50 would be added on the trans-Pacific trade.
OCEAN Alliance, THE Alliance and 2M are dropping six ports that used to be part of the 2M, CKYHE, G6, and O3 networks and are adding eight new ports in the Asia-Europe trade. Overall, they will be dropping 22 ports and adding 19 ports on the Asia-Europe, trans-Atlantic, and trans-Pacific trades, CargoSmart said.
The company estimated that 60% of the routes on the Asia-Europe trade lane would have faster average transit times than before, 5% would be the same, while 35% would have slower average transit times.
CargoSmart said that the alliances would offer fewer services in the top five Asia-Europe port pairs and the services would have fewer sailing days in a week. These port pairs include Shanghai to Hamburg, Shanghai to Rotterdam, Ningbo to Hamburg, Ningbo to Rotterdam, and Shanghai to Antwerp.
“Shippers may need to adjust their shipment patterns and even the shipment routes in their supply chain to match with the latest alliance route networks,” CargoSmart said.
Meanwhile, earlier this month CargoSmart launched Route Master, which it described as “the first tool for shippers to discover and optimize their ocean container shipping routes based on weighted parameters”. Those customized parameters include transit times, reliability, cost, and carriers.