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.
In a statement, the carrier said its 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.
Due to congestion in Savannah, the rotation will initially and until further notice swap the US calls to call at 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, the carrier said, including increasing Transpacific capacity by 48% compared to late-2019.
“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 Phol.
