on September 20, THE alliance members Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, Yang Ming and HMM said that considering the current market situation, the alliance will suspend from Asia to the North American west coast of the PN3 ring until further notice, from October the first week into effect.
Specifically, PN3 will be suspended until further notice, while PN2 will step up rotation and increase port calls.
The upgraded PN2 services will be: Singapore-Laem Chabang-Cai Mep-Haiphong-Yantian-Yangshan-Pusan-Vancouver-Tacoma-Tokyo-Kobe-Kaohsiung-Hong Kong-Singapore.
The upgraded PN2 route will sail from Singapore Port on October 12, while the PN3 route will sail on October 8.
According to eeSea, the PN3 loop weekly service deploys ships with an average capacity of 11400TEU and round-trip voyages of 49 days.
To mitigate the PN3 loop temporary disruption, THE Alliance said it would add port calls and make rotation changes to its Asia-North America PN2 route services.
Following THE alliance members of the Asia-Nordic and Asia-Mediterranean routes of a wide range of suspension, this is in the Golden Week holiday before and after the announcement of the trans-Pacific route service network changes.
In fact, in the past few weeks, the 2M Alliance, Ocean Alliance and THE Alliance partners have significantly increased their reduction plans, cutting capacity on trans-Pacific and Asia-Europe routes by the end of next month in an attempt to stop spot freight rates from falling.
Sea-Intelligence analysts noted the "significant reduction in scheduled capacity" and attributed it to "a large number of temporary cancellations (blank sailings)".
Despite the "temporary cancellation" factor, some loops from Asia have been canceled for several weeks, which can be interpreted as a de facto service suspension.
However, for commercial reasons, alliance member shipping companies have been reluctant to agree to suspend service, especially if a particular loop is their stable sustainable major customer's preferred scenario.
In addition, compared with the continuous suspension and postponement of flights, the suspension of a service, although called "temporary", has a negative impact on the respective alliance and members.
Source: China Cargo Association