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From July, the South Korean Hanjin Shipping company will employ bigger ships on its services between the Far East and Northern Europe. They will be used on the Far East Express (FEX) service and replace ships that, in turn, will provide extra capacity on the Pacific South Pendulum (PS) service.
In cooperation with its alliance partners Cosco, "K" Line and Yangming, Hanjin maintains six weekly services between Northern Europe and the Far East. With the PS pendulum service between Europe, Asia and the West Coast of North America, the South Koreans have a seventh loop on their sailing itinerary.
Four of the seven loops are operated in whole of in part with Hanjin-tonnage. The PS service employs mainly panamax ships of 4571 TEUs that sail under the colours of a German subsidiary, Senator Lines. For other lines, Hanjin provides post-panamax ships of 5302 to 5752 TEUs. Incidentally, the company keeps its largest ships (five of 7500 TEUs) for a weekly trans-Pacific service. From next month, Hanjin will start putting a series of eight ships of 6662 TEUs into service. The first five were already ordered at the end of 2003 at Hyundai Heavy Industries for handover from September 2006, but the yard completed the first ship two months early. In February last year, orders were placed for another three ships. It won’t be until March 2008 before the eighth and last ship in the series will come into service (the Hanjin Chong-qing). The first newly-built vessel will leave Xingang on July 14 as Hanjin Bremerhaven on its maiden voyage for the FEX service. The ship is expected to arrive in Rotterdam for the first time on August 9. The FEX service links Rotterdam, Hamburg and Felixstowe with Singapore, Kaohsiung, Xingang, Kwangyang, Busan and Hongkong. The second vessel in the series will join the FEX fleet at the end of August as Hanjin Budapest.
Both new vessels will replace the slightly smaller Hanjin Athens and Hanjin Amsterdam (5608 TEUs each), which will be moved to the pendulum service. The first vessel to be replaced is the Hanjin Malta of 4024 TEUs. Two post-panamax ships were already put on the PS run recently. The 10 others used on this service will, for the time being, continue to be panamax ships. They call at Rotterdam to load for Port Kelang, Singapore, Yantian, Hongkong and the Japanese ports of Osaka and Tokyo. Source: Press Release
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