Melbourne Star is back – and it’s not the big wheel

MAERSK Line will once again provide a fast seasonal service from Melbourne to South East Asia when it resumes what it designates ‘Melbourne Star’ calls on 10 August.

Melbourne Star involves weekly visits by the line’s Southern Star service, which links NZ with SEA using six 5,568-5,905 TEU vessels, and is “offering best in class lead times into key transhipment hubs in South East Asia and onward connections to global markets … boosting your options during the Australian export peak”.

Indicative transit times are 11 days to Tanjung Pelepas and 13 days to Singapore, with ships calling DP World’s West Swanson Dock terminal in Melbourne.

The first of eight expected Melbourne Star callers is Maersk Rio Negro, followed by Maersk Rio Blanco, Maersk Rio Delta, Maersk Rio Bravo, Maersk Rio India and Maersk Monte Lascar, with the first two then repeating.

This is the third year Maersk has offered Melbourne Star. It provides substantially faster connections than the line’s GAC service, provided in conjunction with ANL (AAX-S), Hapag-Lloyd (SAL) and ONE (AU1) which rotates to Port Botany, Port Adelaide and Fremantle before heading to Port Klang, Tanjung Pelepas and Singapore.

On the GAC service Maersk Shekou (V 630S/633N) will miss the Port Botany call due to scheduled maintenance in SEA and to mitigate any further disruption to the schedule.

Separately, Maersk has advised that due to adverse weather and resulting port closures in Shanghai, delays have impacted Maersk Innoshima's (V 626S/629N) forward schedule in the Northern Star service and as part of schedule recovery measures, it will omit Brisbane.

There’s also a seasonal blanking on the Northern Star service for Capitaine Baret (V 636S/639N). The blanking has been triggered due to cargo seasonality and in response to demand fluctuations, Maersk says.