Hamburg Sud to place larger vessels on ANZL service

HAMBURG Sud plans to upgrade its Asia and Australia/New Zealand (ANZL) service, starting mid-September, with five new 1,800-TEU chartered vessels that are to be phased into the fixed-day weekly service, replacing five smaller ships. The newbuilds, featuring 400 reefers slots apiece and a service speed of 21 knots, will provide an express service between Asia and Australia/New Zealand, the carrier said.

Tasman Orient Line and Hapag-Lloyd will be partners on the service on a slot-charter basis.

The port rotation for the beefed up joint service will be: Yokohama, Kobe, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Brisbane, Tauranga, Lyttleton, New Plymouth, and back to Yokohama.

The service will provide connections throughout Asia and Australasia through the Hamburg Sud network. Hamburg Sud also said that it may add extra ports calls this year to the ANZL service in order to cover specific seasonal customer requirements.