Hapag-Lloyd and OOCL to cooperate with MSC on North Atlantic service

SLCS (St. Lawrence Co-ordinated Services) members, OOCL and Hapag-Lloyd, announce they will rationalize their jointly-operated SLCS1 North Atlantic service/ GEX1 with the Canadian Gateway service of Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC), known as the Montreal Express 1.

The first sailing of the new service, which has the objective of providing better overall port coverage for our customers, will be the OOCL Belgium ETD Antwerp on July 30, 2009.

The partners will deploy 4 vessels, OOCL Belgium (2,808 TEUs), Hapag-Lloyd’s Mississauga Express (2,808 TEUs), MSC Suez and MSC Jordan (both 3,007 TEUS).

Port rotation will be Montreal, Liverpool, Antwerp, Bremerhaven, Le Havre, Liverpool and Montreal.

The other SLCS weekly service, SLCS2/ GEX2, covering Montreal, Hamburg and Antwerp, is not part of this rationalization and remains unchanged.