Container business continuously adjusting
Maersk is quietly winding down its MMX or Montreal Mediterranean Express service. The company has ma…Maersk is quietly winding down its MMX or Montreal Mediterranean Express service. The company has made no formal announcement of the service ending. However, no ships are scheduled after December. The MMX Service began in July of this year, calling in Halifax for the first time on Aug. 2, with a rotation of four vessels.
The introduction of the service was somewhat surprising, given there are two other services which covered an almost identical route. The Montreal Mediterranean Express directly competed with ZIM’s ZCI service and the Alliances AL6. The Alliance previously dropped Halifax from its AL6 service, and began marketing ZIM’s ZCI Service as AL7. With ZIM joining the 2M alliance with Maersk and MSC, it seems likely that the MMX traffic will also be picked up by ZIM’s service.
On the other side of the Atlantic, several shipping lines are changing their port of call in the U.K. Felixstow has been losing calls to London Gateway due to delays caused by congestion. The port implemented new terminal operating system software in June to track container movements. The software was developed in house, and had numerous issues, which resulted in containers being stacked incorrectly. The software-caused congestion has since been compounded by weather, volume and a shortage of truck drivers to move the containers out of the port.
Source: thechronicleherald.ca