Maersk to redesign Asian ocean network to improve speed to market

The rejig includes introduction of new services ME4, ME7 and FI4 amongst other changes. Redesigning the network will bring more resilience to the customers’ supply chains, protecting them better from operational challenges that arise out of contingencies, the Denmark-headquartered company said in a media release.

The new ME4 service will offer a faster transit between Doha and North Europe, thus improving speed to market by up to 5 days and by up to 6 days from Jebel Ali to West Africa for majority of customers. The ME3 service will see an improvement in transit times, while the FI3 service will change from fortnightly to weekly giving frequent options for importers getting cargo from Far East into North India.

The ME7 service will connect South India’s lifestyle, retail and automotive manufacturing sector directly to Europe. The cargo will thus flow smoothly without getting affected by unforeseen delays in case of congestions. It will also provide a direct and regular rotation between the hubs of Colombo and Salalah, thus letting customers have a more flexible option of moving their cargo. The new FI4 service, that combines previous Jade Express and Chennai Express, will connect South East Asia with India and Pakistan on a single direct service.

“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains have experienced a perfect storm. The unprecedented scale of operational challenges restricting supply during the pandemic and the strong demand surge in parallel led to significant bottlenecks, capacity issues and unforeseen delays across supply chains. This prompted us to redesign our ocean network to overcome these challenges and make our customers’ supply chains more resilient,” said Mads Skov-Hansen, head of liner operations cluster, Maersk West & Central Asia.

As a part of redesigning of the network, the ME6 service as well as transhipment on AE1 at Colombo will be discontinued. Customers will continue to have the options to connect their cargo on a full array of services calling West & Central Asia. The network changes will be implemented in a phased manner and will not affect the total deployed capacity in the global network.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KD)