Maersk North America has announced the start of a new service linking ports in Vietnam and China with the US East Coast via the Panama Canal, starting in May 2021.

The TP23 string will include eight Maersk vessels and two from ZIM. The rotation is intended to be Vung Tau, Vietnam/Yantian, South China/Panama Canal /Savannah /Charleston/Newark, while due to congestion in Savannah, the rotation will initially and until further notice swap the U.S. calls to go Charleston/Savannah/Newark.

The service will improve speed, reliability and coverage and integrate into US East Coast landside logistics offerings. Transit times are improved from Yantian to Savannah by 3-4 days (28-29 days) and Yantian to Charleston by 7-8 days (28-29 days) over existing services. The Vietnam call has been added to provide more capacity to the rapidly growing market that has seen gains of 52% and 25% the past two years.

Narin Phol, Managing Director of Maersk North America said “Importers are looking for more US East Coast gateways in their Asia/North America supply chains while exporters are looking for more equipment – especially in the Southeast US region. The TP23 service will enable us to address these needs while integrating our Warehousing & Distribution network.”

The evolution of the TP23 Service reflects Maersk’s 2020 approach to serve the Transpacific to US East Coast cargo surges via additional capacity from service upgrades, extra-loaders and loadings on the Asia-Europe network for transshipment onto extra loader shuttles across the Transatlantic.  The TP23 will now become a structured, stable, weekly service in 2021 with greater reliability.

The new TP23 service highlights the innovative solutions Maersk made in 2020 to stay agile for customers facing economic and pandemic cycles:

• Deploying 48% extra capacity year-on-year in the Transpacific trade (July-November 2020 vs July-November 2019 period).

• Actions included:1) Launching the Asia/US West Coast TP3 Service as a new 2M US West Coast loop with 6 x 13,000 TEU vessels.
  2) Upgrading the Asia/US East Coast TP11 Service from 6500 TEU to 8500 TEU vessels.
  3) Upgrading the Asia/US East Coast TP88 Service from 4500 TEU to 6500 TEU vessels.
  4) Launching nine, dedicated Maersk extra loaders for the US East Coast, representing 44,000 TEU extra capacity.
  5) Launching two extra loaders shared with 2M partners for 13,500 TEU extra capacity.
  6) Loading three partner-operated, US East Coast extra loaders.
  7) Loading a significant amount of Asia/US East Coast cargo on the Asia/Europe network, using 11 dedicated Maersk extra loaders across the Transatlantic.

“The goal in 2021 is to build on this momentum and enable customers to grow their business with an integrated ocean/port/warehouse/trucking model to attain supply chain efficiency,” added Mr. Phol.

Source:Maersk