The first ship from Ocean Alliance berthed at EUROGATE Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven on Saturday, 13 May 2017. The debut premiered the ship OOCL Tianjin (8,888 TEUs).
Images courtesy of Eurogate
In early April of this year, Ocean Alliance took up operations to Wilhelmshaven in its Asia–North Europe 1 Service (NEU 1). In terms of ship capacity, the Asia–North Europe 1 is the largest service offered by Ocean Alliance, as soon it will include eleven of the world’s largest container ships. This incorporates six newbuildings from the shipping company OOCL, with nearly 22,000 TEUs transport capacity, as well as the flagship of the COSCO shipping company, the CSCL Globe, with a transport capacity of just under 19,000 TEUs.
The world’s largest container ship in future, the OOCL Hong Kong (21,100 TEUs), is expected to call at the port in Wilhelmshaven on 1 July 2017 during its maiden voyage.
The announcement made by Ocean Alliance to include Wilhelmshaven in its schedule has already led to an additional success for the site. Several railway operators have published their schedules for the rail connections to/from Wilhelmshaven. These include EUROGATE Intermodal, Transfracht, Duisport, Necoss, Roland Spedition and Roland Umschlag with LOCON. An overview of all the rail connections can be viewed on the EUROGATE website at: www.eurogate.eu/rail-ctw
Michael Blach, Chairman of the EUROGATE Group Management Board, says: “We’re delighted that we were able to convince the four Ocean Alliance shipping companies of Wilhelmshaven’s nautical advantages. All in all, we now have eight shipping companies calling at Wilhelmshaven as part of their schedules. This also results in new offers for logistics service providers and rail transport operators, which are making the container port more and more attractive every day for the shipping industry. We are very happy about this and are looking to the future with high expectations.”
Jan Schmahl, Managing Director North Europe Group for Orient Overseas Container Line Ltd. (OOCL), says: “This is a special day for us – the day that Ocean Alliance is calling at port for the very first time in Wilhelmshaven. Within the scope of our new, strong alliance, we can now offer our customers in northern Europe a service from Wilhelmshaven which provides the fastest transit times to the Far East as well as an alternative gateway to Germany. Since the announcement of our decision to include Wilhelmshaven in the schedule of our LL1 service, we have experienced only positive responses. This encouragement is great to receive and strengthens us in our decision. A heartfelt thanks goes out to our customers and our service providers for their support, which has enabled us to have such a successful start of this new service.”
Source: Eurogate