13/01/2025
The Ocean Alliance (OA) has announced its shipping network for 2025, which includes three new services and a major bet on the transpacific.
Yesterday, member carrier OOCL published the alliance’s updated schedule, to be fully implemented in April.
The network is notably weighted heavily in favour of the transpacific, with nine weekly services into the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex and five a week into the North American Pacific north-west gateways.
The North American east coast ports will see eight weekly services.
OA will offer seven Asia-North Europe and four Asia-Mediterranean strings, three Asia-Middle East services and two Asia-Red Sea routes that are currently suspended.
The Ocean Alliance’s three new services are: the PSX, South Pacific China Express, serving Xiamen-Yantian-Long Beach-Kaohsiung; the PNW5, serving Ningbo-Shanghai-Vancouver-Seattle-Lianyungang, with Seattle as a private call for OOCL vessels only; and LL3, an Asia-Europe route calling Shanghai-Xiamen-Hong Kong-Yantian-Cai Mep-Singapore-Rotterdam-Hamburg-Zeebrugge-Felixstowe/London-Port Kelang.
Japanese carrier ONE, part of the new Premier Alliance, is cooperating on three of the Ocean Alliance’s transatlantic services, the AT1/ATE1, AT2/ATE2 and AT3/ATG. In addition, OOCL will cooperate on the ATW transatlantic service that also calls at Oakland and Los Angeles via the Panama Canal , predominately operated by HMM.
Like rival deepsea networks, OA’s includes both Suez Canal and Cape of Good Hope versions, but the alliance confirmed that vessels would continue to be diverted round the Cape for the safety of crews, cargo and vessels.
When the Suez Canal is again safe to transit, the network will see more Middle Eastern and Mediterranean ports added to the strings, due to the shorter voyages being resumed.
As part of yesterday’s update, OOCL also revealed that all the partners in the Ocean Alliance, Cosco, OOCL, Evergreen and CMA CGM, had agreed to extend the collaboration for “at least five more years”.
“In an ever-changing market environment, this initiative undoubtedly reflects Ocean Alliance’s confidence in providing customers with stable and reliable services over the long term,” it said.
According to analysts at liner database eeSea, network rejigs represent a reform of the transatlantic services operated by THE Alliance, which is set to be replaced by the Premier Alliance at the beginning of February.
Meanwhile, on Friday The Loadstar reported on OOCL’s unaudited Q4 revenue of just over $2.5bn, a year-on-year growth of 55% over Q4 23, and its full-year revenue of $9.8bn, “indicating that 2024 is likely to be another bumper year for deepsea carriers”.
