Grand Alliance's new North America services produce more containers for Hamburg

Both imports and exports in the North Atlantic trade are on course fo
r continued growth. The Grand Alliance consortium's decision to offer
the port's customers a regular liner service to and from North America
is certainly a bonus for the Port of Hamburg. Two of the consortium's
five services will in future be commencing and ending in Hamburg at H
HLA's Burchardkai. This will entail two additional weekly sailings to
North America that will produce around 150,000 containers (TEU) per ye
ar for the port on the Elbe. In a fresh premiere for HHLA's Burchardka
i, the first containership on the new North America service to be hand
led here was the "OOCL Haven".
Apart from Hapag-Lloyd, the members of the Grand Alliance are shipow
ners Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK, Japan), Orient Overseas Container Line
(OOCL, Hong Kong), Malaysian International Shipping Corporation (MISC,
Malaysia) and P&O Nedlloyd of the UK/Netherlands.
Two of altogether five liner services offered by the Grand Alliance
in cooperation with Americana Ships now call at Hamburg. These are the
so-called "butterfly services" providing two links and serving ports
in the following rotation: HAMBURG, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Southampton, N
ew York, Norfolk, Charleston, New York, Southampton, Le Havre, Rotterd
am, HAMBURG, Charleston, Miami, Houston, Charleston, HAMBURG. Hamburg
thus forms the beginning and the end of two loops, one serving the nor
thern sector of the US East Coast and the other leading to its souther
n sector plus the US Gulf. Eight containerships offering capacities of
around 2,700 to 3,000 TEU are deployed on this combined liner service
.
For the Port of Hamburg's customers in Germany, Scandinavia, Central
and Eastern Europe, the new sailings substantially broaden the port's
range of direct connections to and from North America. With the momen
tum remaining greater on exports than on imports, the North America tr
affic shows a gratifying growth of almost 28 percent within the first
six months of the year.