Evergreen adds the West Coast of South America to its global system

In May 2002, Evergreen Marine Corporation is to add the West Coast of South America to its global container service network through the launch of a new service linking its Caribbean hub port in Coco Solo, Panama with five ports in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. The carrier is now in the process of appointing agents in the latter three countries; it already has an established agent in Colombia as it has been serving the northern coast for many years.

Four ships are to be employed on this new Panama - West Coast South America (PWS) service. They are the 1555TEU sisterships LT Africa and LT Europa plus the 964TEU Uni-Forever and 956TEU Uni-Fortune. All are equipped with their own shipboard cranes, a necessity on the West Coast of South America, and are equipped with onboard reefer plugs to meet with the local market requirements for refrigerated container capacity.

They will provide a fixed-day weekly service with the following port rotation:

Coco Solo - Buenaventura - Guayaquil - Callao - Iquique - Valparaiso - Callao - Guayaquil - Buenaventura - Coco Solo.

The Colon Container Terminal (CCT) in Coco Solo currently features on two mainline Evergreen schedules, the AUE and NUE services with calls both eastbound and westbound, and is also the base port for a comprehensive Caribbean and Central American regional feeder network based around the line’s CAN and CAS services.

The AUE and NUE services provide CCT with twice weekly connections to both Asia and the East Coast of North America while the NUE service also provides weekly connections to California and to North Europe.

The first sailing from Coco Solo will take place on 2 May and Evergreen will be accepting cargo in Asia, North America and Europe for West Coast South American destinations from early April onwards.

Announcing this new addition to the Evergreen service network, Evergreen Marine Corporation’s President, Mr Marcel Chang, stated:

“This service is especially important as South America is one of the growth regions of the world. We are already well established on the East Coast in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, and further north in Venezuela and Colombia. We are delighted now to be able to offer our existing customers a strong and reliable service to and from Ecuador, Peru and Chile.

“We are also looking forward to welcoming new customers in South America. We believe they will appreciate our special brand of service. As one of the world’s top three carriers, we provide a state-of-the-art level of operations that few other carriers can match and as an independent, free of consortia constraints, we are able to offer space guarantees, even in the peak shipping season.”