he Gemini network, which Danish carrier Maersk runs with Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd, is redrawing its links between Asia and the Mediterranean, and Tanger Med comes out of it both winner and loser. Announced early this week, the reorganization creates a new service, AE18, whose rotation will start in Shanghai and call at Xiamen and the Malaysian port of Tanjung Pelepas before reaching Algeciras and then Tangier, returning to Xiamen via Algeciras. In exchange, the Moroccan port loses two westbound calls: on AE2, which links Asia to Northern Europe, Rotterdam takes its place, while AE11 now prefers Port Said, in Egypt.
The changes will take effect gradually from mid-November. AE18 was designed to gather on the Strait, at Tangier and Algeciras, connections until now spread across several services, which keeps Tanger Med in the backbone of the network despite the two lost calls. Moroccan importers, exporters and freight forwarders will nonetheless have to rework their shipping schedules and connections: it is the price of a network reshaping itself as the major carriers return to the Suez Canal route, and the Strait will remain one of its crossroads.
Photo: Adam Cli, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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