News / Cork bags second transatlantic call

Photo: VesselFinder

Next month Ireland will get its second direct call to the US after CMA CGM announced it would include a call at the port of Cork on one of its transatlantic services.

The move will double existing transatlantic direct calls at the port.

The North Europe-North America-Oceania PAD string is operated outside the Ocean and Alliance, instead in conjunction with niche French carrier Marfret which contributes one vessel of the 14 deployed, and markets itself as a North Europe-South Pacific service.

However, the addition of the Cork call means the carriers will add a fifteenth vessel to the rotation, the 2,250 teu CMA CGM White, which is currently deployed on the carrier’s intra-Americas AMERXL service and will make its inaugural call at Cork on the PAD on 28 April.

“Cork will be directly linked to New York and Savannah. This direct solution is designed to deliver a premium experience to the Irish market and our customers, offering improved reliability and frequency,” a CMA CGM customer advisory said.

Currently the only direct transatlantic call at Cork is undertaken by Independent Container Line’s (ICL) TA1 service, which deploys four 3,100 teu vessels on a port rotation of Antwerp-Southampton-Cork-Philadelphia-Wilmington.

In comparison, the revised PAD service will have 15 vessels with an average capacity of 2,400 teu and has a far more elongated port rotation of: Zeebrugge-Rotterdam-Dunkirk-Radicatel-Cork-New York-Savannah-Kingston-Panama Canal-Papeete-Noumea-Brisbane-Sydney-melbourne-Tauranga-Panama Canal-Cartagena-Savannah-Philadelphia.

“My hunch with this move is that CMA CGM is looking to get some of the premium freight rates that ICL’s service commands,” one transatlantic freight forwarder told The Loadstar.

According to the Freightos Terminal spot rate platform, the average spot rate from Cork to New York currently stands at $2,088 per 40ft, although it has seen significant swings over the past 12 months – this time last year the average Cork-New York spot rate was $3,150 per 40ft, according to Freightos.

Meanwhile today’s market average transatlantic westbound rate as per Drewry’s Rotterdam-New York leg on its World Container Index (WCI), is $12,502 per 40ft, down 2% on the week before and 35% down year-on-year.

“To be honest, I feel that many Irish exporters to the US have become pretty used to feedering out of the country – we use the BG Freight services to Liverpool to connect with Atlantic Container Line’s transatlantic services and tranship there, and it works really well,” the forwarder added.

Container Trades Statistics (CTS) data shows that freight rates fell throughout last year on the transatlantic trades (the data includes both North Europe-North America and Mediterranean-North America routes)…

Source: Container Trades Statistics

… and while monthly volumes peaked and dipped according to what part of the tariff-induced cycle the trade was in, the full-year volume was just 0.4% above 2024.

Source: Container Trades Statistics

However, carriers have also been cutting capacity on the trade – most notably the decision of the Ocean Alliance (of which CMA CGM is a lead member) and Japanese carrier ONE to this month suspended one of the three transatlantic services they jointly operate and reduced offered capacity from 21,500 teu per week to 15,000 teu per week, and which appears to already be having an effect on spot freight rates.

“There are some rate increases on the trade going into April, which we are attributing to the Ocean Alliance pulling one of their loops – in fact, the alliance ships are pretty full at the moment, “ the forwarder said, but added: “Give it a month or so and it will settle down.”

According to the latest Linerlytica data, total capacity across all carriers on the North Eruoe-North America trade stands at 566,235 teu across 102 vessels, and is 5.8% down year-on-year, while Mediterranean-North America capacity is 448,736 teu across 78 vessels and is 2.2% up on last year.

Assuming that CMA CGM’s entrance does not cause ex-Ireland spot rates to crash, ICL will point to its superior schedule reliability as its chief advantage for customers.

According to Sea-Intelligence schedule reliability data, ICL’s TA1 service saw 100% on-time arrivals in December/January for westbound shipments, as did ACL’s transatlantic service, compared to just 20% recorded for CMA CGM’s PAD service in the same period.

Sea-Intelligence data showed that CMACGM’s entire transatlantic sailings for period arrived on-time 31.8%, while across all carriers it was 55%.