Grand Alliance stalls on transpacific service restart

Grand Alliance carriers Hapag-Lloyd, NYK and OOCL have decided to push back the restart of a weekly Far East/U.S. West Coast service that was suspended at the end of last year.

The North China Express (NCX) was dropped in October as part of a wider scaling back in transpacific capacity by shipping lines determined to cut costs in the low-profit trade. At the time, Shippers NewsWire was told the service would resume at the end of February. But with that date passed a spokesman for the Grand Alliance would only say that the NCX is now expected to resurface later in the year. Presently, the Grand Alliance is considering all deployment options and monitoring the trade, he added.

The NCX used five ships in the 3,600-TEU to 4,950-TEU range and had a port rotation of Dalian, Xingang, Qingdao, Busan, Long Beach, Oakland, Busan and Dalian. Ports previously called on the NCX were picked up by the Central China Express (CCX), which added a fifth ship to cover the extended range.

Source: American Shipper