Seatrade-Maritime: Hapag-Lloyd vessel makes Suez Canal transit

Published by Seatrade-Maritime

In what appears to be a one-off transit of the Suez Canal, at this point, Hapag-Lloyd’s 14,990 teu Al Jmeliyah transited the Bab el Mandeb heading for the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean.

Al Jmeliyah is deployed on the SE1/AE2 Asia to Mediterranean service, a joint loop which the German carrier operates with its Gemini Cooperation partner, Maersk Line.

Veson Nautical’s VesselsValue AIS tracked the ship around 100km southeast of Sicily, at the time of writing, with the expectation that the ship will arrive at the Spanish port of Algeciras on 12 September.

According to Linerlytica, Hapag Lloyd’s return to the Suez Canal route, “remains an ad hoc arrangement,” with other ships operated by Gemini on this and other services still taking the much longer route around the Cape of Good Hope.

That said, Linerlytica added: “Maersk has already started to make regular westbound sailings on the NE1/AE2, SE2/AE11, SE3/AE15 and SE4/AE19 as the two Gemini Cooperation partners eye a full return to the Suez.”

Hapag-Lloyd’s decision to test the Red Sea/Suez route follows the lead of CMA CGM, which has continued to operate on the Red Sea routes during much of the last three years. Maersk has this attempted to shift tonnage back to the shorter route.

Wan Hai Line and Cosco Shipping have also recently tentatively returned to the shorter route as global demand continues to be strong and offered capacity is impacted by ongoing climatic disruptions.