Touched on this subject on this post.
Due to taking work off of a competitor, GB's 4L66/4M66 Daventry/Felixstowe service returns next week. It will run to Daventry Monday, Wednesday and Friday and will run to Iport Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 4L43/4E43 will run to Daventry Tuesday and Thursday and to Iport Monday, Wednesday and...
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To explain the musical chairs that is happening. Presently Maersk operates joint services with MSC on the main east/west trades under an agreement called 2M. This agreement is ending in February and Maersk will team up with Hapag Lloyd to operate the Gemini cooperation in the main /east trades. At the same time, Hapag are quitting their current Alliance agreement with ONE, Yang Ming and HMM in the same trades with these three lines forming a new agreement called Premier Alliance. MSC as the worlds largest shipping line will then operate it's own standalone services, but because Premier Alliance does not have sufficient capacity of it's own, they will take slots on some of MSC's Asia Europe services with MSC also taking slots on some Premier Alliance services in return.
Gemimi will operate what is known as a hub and spoke service, with Rotterdam and Bremerhaven being the two hub ports in North Europe and feeders operating to and from other ports, except in the UK where the original plan was to use Felixstowe for Asia Europe services, by far the largest volume, Southampton for Transatlantic services and London Gateway for Middle East and Indian Subcontinent services. Under existing agreements 2M used Felixstowe and London Gateway whilst the Alliance used Southampton and London Gateway for their joint services. For Hapag the proposed move to Felixstowe was massive because none of it's own services operated from the port so it was faced with the problem of securing road and rail transport capacity to and from an already congested port, after operating from Southampton for over thirty years. To make matters worse, it's main road haulier Maritime Transport Limited, announced on the lst September 2024 that it had been acquired by the Swiss logistics firm, Medlog, which is basically a subsidiary of MSC. Whilst Maritime stated the company would continue to be operated by the existing UK Management obviously Hapag would have been concerned that eventually MSC could learn the destinations of all containers hauled by Maritime Transport on their behalf. In the meantime, earlier in the year Hapag had acquired the London Gateway Port based road haulier ATL to service some of it's existing London Gateway and Southampton traffic.
https://motortransport.co.uk/operat...rman-shipping-giant-hapag-lloyd/17864.article It looks like during their Gemini planning meetings Maersk and Hapag decided that the combined transport and port congestion problems at Felixstowe could have detrimental effects on service levels which would be critical to the success of the new Gemini cooperation which relies on mother and feeder ships remaining on schedule. In the meantime, DP World London Gateway started commissioning of a third berth and no doubt will have been very interested in securing a major customer such as the proposed Gemini services and no doubt would have priced any enquiries competitively, resulting in the change of plan by the Gemini lines.
So that's the history and basically it means Felixstowe will loose three vessel ports calls at week which usually would be capable of carrying up to 24000 teu each. Not all these containers would be discharged/loaded in Felixstowe, but it's reasonable to assume about 5000 teu (or 2500 forty foot containers) at least would be discharged and a similar number loaded although the majority of these will be empties. Maersk already operates from London Gateway but this is primarily to load export containers many of which will have entered the UK through Fellixstowe but when emptied are delivered back to London Gateway Port from where the haulier will pick up a laden container. Hapag and it's Alliance partners already operated out of London Gateway, but the new agreement will see a huge number of extra containers moving through London Gateway. The news that DP World now plan to build a fourth berth would suggest that ultimately Gemini will also shift it's Southampton operations for London Gateway port, possibly well before it is completed.
As far as Felixstowe is concerned, the loss of the three Maersk services will give the port the opportunity to adjust berthing windows for remaining shipping lines which should ease congestion and allow the port to look to capture other traffic, perhaps even some lost to London Gateway. I suspect the key here will be MSC who operates a number of services from London Gateway, some of which over the years have transferred from Felixstowe due to ongoing congestion. Post February 2025 MSC and Premier Alliance will operate a total of eight Asia Europe Services, three of which are planned to omit the UK entirely. Two services will probably be operated by Premier Alliance and will call Southampton, MSC will likely operate one service calling at London Gateway primarily to load exports for the Middle East before returning to Asia, plus a second service with a double call at Felixstowe. A third MSC service from Asia currently operates to Liverpool but was shown on the initial press release as switching to Felixstowe but the indications are so far that the service will remain at Liverpool, especially given the considerable investment that MSC has put into the Liverpool 2 terminal with it's joint venture with Peel Ports. Under the agreement with with Premier Alliance the later will not participate on the MSC services to Felixstowe and Liverpool and it's still possible that MSC could alter the port calls on individual services to match volumes and trade flows as they are still to announce the full details of all their post 2m schedules which included two Transatlantic services calling at London Gateway Port. However, this may have been to cater for Premier Alliance, but it looks from filings with the US authorities that they will operate independent services so MSC could decide to shift these and other services back to Felixstowe where they can take advantage of any additional rail and road capacity without having to compete with Maersk/Hapag.
The question should therefore perhaps be, how many trains per day to/from Felixstowe were exclusively operated for Maersk and how many of these operated via the North London line? I'm assuming the later could be truncated and diverted to London Gateway without too many problems, assuming the rollingstock pairing with depots was suitable. One would assume the Ely services are routed that way because the paths exist, raising the question of whether the paths from Ely, Peterborough, Leicester or Nuneaton to and from London Gateway Port are available or has Gemini just scored a big home goal?
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