MEDITERRANEAN Shipping Company has restored Brisbane calls to its Noumea Shuttle service, reversing a change that was implemented amongst May revisions to several on its Oceania palette.
As of Friday [3 July] when the 2,664 TEU MSC Rini III calls at Brisbane the service rotation will be Port Botany, Brisbane, Noumea, Lautoka, Suva, Tauranga, Port Botany. The other two vessels on the shuttle are the 2,524 TEU MSC Davao III and the 1,114 TEU Medkon Ten.
As container lines do, MSC has portrayed the reinstatement of Brisbane as an upgrade and “an enhanced rotation that gives exporters renewed direct access to the Pacific Islands market in New Caledonia and Fiji, along with further access to New Zealand”.
Separately, MSC is yet to officially confirm the cessation of the weekly, later fortnightly, Kangaroo service from China to Australia, although it has now disappeared from company schedules.
The last port call by the service, which was initially used to position tonnage in from Asia to join the new MSC Eagle service from ANZ to Central and East Coast North America, was by 2,556 TEU MSC Sheffield III at Port Botany 23 June during which the vessel shifted to Eagle.
Meanwhile, the recently-announced A3X service to be provided by the A3 consortium on a weekly rotation of Qingdao, Shanghai, Shekou, Melbourne, Port Botany, Qingdao has now been populated with a fleet of five vessels, comprising two from ANL, two from COSCO Shipping and one from OOCL.
These are scheduled to be the 3,338 TEU Colombo (COSCO), the 4,526 TEU OOCL Norfolk, the 4,132 TEU Ulsan (COSCO), and the 3,500 TEU CMA CGM Fort Saint Charles and CMA CGM Fort d’Epee, both ANL. The first sailing is from Qingdao on 28 July.