The ports served by the new regular weekly service are as follows: Rotterdam, Ham-burg, Antwerp, Le Havre, Salvador (fortnightly), Suape (fortnightly), Santos, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio Grande, Itajai, Paranagua, Santos, Rio de Janeiro, Tangier and back via Rotterdam to Hamburg. The new service has six ships with a capacity ranging between
2700 and 2900 TEU plying between Europe and the east coast of South America. Six vessels are provided by CMA CGM and one by Maruba.
In view of the large quantities of refrigerated goods that are sent north, the ships have as many as 600 reefer connections. The transit time for the round trip amounts to 42 days. A container takes just 18 days to cover the distance between Hamburg and Buenos Aires, 17 days for the route between Hamburg and Santos.
The year 2007 saw a continuing concentration of container shipments between Hamburg and the east coast of South America, with the volume of goods rising to 344,000 TEU – 16 percent more than the previous year. Shipments between Ham-burg and the west coast of South America also developed positively,
with a 13.2 per-cent increase reaching 86,000 TEU.
Container transports to and from Brazil ac-counted for a total of 268,000 TEU. Brazilian industry continues to be responsible for a rising volume of foreign trade, strengthening Brazil's position as ninth in the list of Hamburg's top ten trading partners.