Hapag-Lloyd has announced it will switch three of its transatlantic services from Thamesport to Southampton in another blow for the UK port.
The German carrier said it would move its North America-Europe Gulf Atlantic Express (GAX) and Gulf Mexico Express (GMX) services and its Latin America/North America-Europe Pacific Atlantic Express (PAX) service to Southampton in October.
Hapag-Lloyd said the service change was being made “in order to further improve the schedule reliability and to offer the best possible service”, but declined to comment further.
Hapag-Lloyd, along with partners Zim Line and Mitsui OSK Lines, stopped calling at Thamesport with their Africa-Europe WAX/NAF/ARN service in July in favour of only calling at Antwerp and Hamburg in Europe.
A company spokesman said the service was skipping Thamesport at the moment for "schedule recovery" as there were some delays in Tema due to ongoing terminal work there.
According to the Thamesport website, other than Hapag-Lloyd, the port also handles calls from MacAndrews and BG Freight Line.
BG Freight Line said it had no plans to switch its Thamesport service to another port.
Chief executive Koert Luitwieler said it had only launched its service to Thamesport a month ago and in fact the move by Hapag-Lloyd could boost the volumes it carries there.
He said many shippers would still require services to Thamesport and would turn to feeder and shortsea operators such as BG Freight Line in order to meet this need.
According to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Hapag-Lloyd partners with NYK Line and OOCL on the GAX and PAX services as part of the Grand Alliance, while it partners with OOCL on the GMX service.
The move follows a series of port changes in the UK as a range of new box port capacity comes on stream and carrier alliances appear to be consolidating services at fewer ports.
Thamesport and Tilbury are both located close to DP World’s London Gateway, which will open before the end of the year and will provide intense competition for both ports.
Last week, sister publication Lloyd’s List revealed that Evergreen had stopped calling Thamesport in favour of Felixstowe.
It said the move was due to enhanced co-operation with the CKYH Alliance on its Asia-Europe strings, which resulted in the need to adjust service rotations in line with partners’ port rotations.
Sister publication Lloyd’s List reported last Monday that London Gateway has landed its inaugural liner service customer — the SAECS consortium which operates services between Europe and southern Africa — from Tilbury.
Member lines Maersk and sister line Safmarine, plus Japan’s MOL and Germany’s Deutsche Afrika Linien, advised customers of the planned switch from Tilbury to nearby London Gateway on Monday.
In letters to shippers, the partners each said: “With this change of terminal, the lines aim to secure not only benefits for their clients through the new infrastructure (such as improved rail connections) and access to UK markets, but also operational advantages which will assist the lines in maintaining schedule integrity and reliability, while enabling you to further streamline your supply chains.”
OOCL and NYK both use Southampton as their main UK hub.
However, it has not been all bad news for Thamesport; MacAndrews has started calling at the port and describes it as the best in its network.
The CMA CGM shortsea subsidiary switched some of its services from Tilbury’s London Container Terminal to Thamesport in April.
At the moment, it is unclear how these service changes will affect the total throughput of port volumes.