The members of THE Alliance announced today an enhancement of their future Mediterranean-North America East Coast product. The port rotation of the AL 6 service will be streamlined and the Spanish ports of Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia and Algeciras will be served through a new cooperation with ZIM Line on the latter’s existing Mediterranean-North America loop. This additional service will be branded as the AL 7. The Italian ports of Salerno, Livorno, La Spezia, Genoa as well as FOS in France will remain part of the AL 6 service as previously announced.
By differentiating the port coverage within the Mediterranean the members of THE Alliance will offer their customer’s superior transit times between the two important regions US/Canada and Mediterranean
The new port rotation of the AL 6 service will be:
Salerno – Livorno – La Spezia – Genoa – FOS – Halifax – New York – Norfolk – Savannah – Salerno
The port coverage of THE Alliance in the AL 7 will be as follows:
Barcelona – Tarragona – Valencia – Algeciras – Halifax – New York – Norfolk – Savannah – Valencia – Tarragona – Barcelona
Both services will be launched at the beginning of April 2017 along with the implementation of the entire THE Alliance product (subject to completion of all relevant regulatory requirements).
The members of THE Alliance are Hapag-Lloyd, “K”Line, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Nippon Yusen Kaisha and Yang Ming. The partners plan to deploy a fleet of more than 240 modern ships in the Asia/Europe, North Atlantic and Trans-Pacific trade lanes including the Middle East and the Arabian Gulf/Red Sea. The service network is expected to cover more than 24 ports in Asia including ten Chinese and five Japanese ports with direct calls as well as 20 ports in the US and Canada, six North European and 13 Mediterranean ports, six ports in the Middle East and six ports in Central America/Caribbean. The final and precise port rotations of all 32 services of THE Alliance will be announced soon.