Maersk containers on ship

Maersk Line's Daily Maersk Service is looking to further improve reliability and shorten transit times to Europe from Shanghai by adding new calls at Le Havre in France, Hamburg in Germany and Zeebrugge in Belgium.

According to Maersk, the improved product will see a 26-day transit from Shanghai to Zeebrugge and Le Havre, and 28 days to Hamburg.

However, shippers will not receive cash compensation for late guaranteed deliveries, available on the Daily Maersk service linking Ningbo, Shanghai, Yantian and Tanjung Pelepas with Felixstowe, Rotterdam and Bremerhaven.

'The cancellation of the vessel sharing agreement with CMA offered us another opportunity to look at how we served customers moving cargo between Asia and north Europe,' said Vincent Clerc, vice-president of Europe service management at Maersk Line. 'We found that without CMA we could actually offer an enhanced service to customers in more corridors and maintain our promise on the Daily Maersk corridors. So that is what we did.'

The changes will take effect in connection with the discontinuation of the vessel sharing agreement with CMA CGM in mid-February.