Seoul: CKYH Alliance members Coscon, "K"LINE, Yang Ming and Hanjin Shipping have announced plans for "the rationalisation of services in order to respond to growing uncertainty in the world's economy".
CKYH has already suspended a number of services since early October 2008 including its EMX (East Med Express) and its AWE (All Water East Coast) Central Loop - taking the decision to reduce capacity in the CKYH AWE trade by 18.5%. It is also currently in the midst of an extensive study to further restructure the Asia-East Mediterranean services, including the ADX (Aegean Sea Direct Express) service.
Other alliance run services to see cutbacks include the Hanjin Shipping operated European service CNX, which will be suspended from the end of January 2009, (thereby reducing CKYH weekly capacity to North Europe by around 9 %), and the alliance's current MAP (Mediterranean - Asia - America Pendulum) service, to be terminated effective from early 2009 (which will reduce Pacific South West trade capacity by about 13 - 15% of the total capacity deployed in the PSW trade by the CKYH Alliance). However, CKYH has stated that it intends to utilise current services, such as SEA (South China Express) as a substitute for its MAP service.
The alliance also intends to decrease capacity in deployed in the TAS - (North Trans Atlantic) service connecting the U.S. and Europe by approximately 18% as of mid-November 2008. Existing calling ports and schedule will remain unchanged, but four smaller 2,500 teu vessels will replace the 3,000teu vessels currently operating the route. [13/11/08]
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