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Photo: Ellerman
By Alex Lennane
UK-based container shipping line Ellerman City Liners has shored-up its transatlantic service via a space-sharing agreement with MSC.
The first sailing will depart the Lithuanian gateway of Klaipeda on 1 January, and Ellerman will use a combination of MSC capacity and its own vessels between ports in Scandinavia and the Baltic, Northern Europe and the east coast of the US.
The agreement allows for a set weekly volume, which Ellerman can increase if required, for both dry cargo and reefers.
MSC and Ellerman both pointed to increased efficiencies from the deal, including environmentally.
“This agreement is all about efficiency,” said Pasquale Formisano, SVP of MSC. “Guaranteed cargo means we can operate at maximum capacity and, therefore, minimise the environmental impact of each teu we carry. The more we can do that, the more we can reduce emissions.”
Peter Andrews, commercial director of Ellerman, added: “This agreement allows Ellerman to operate with greater efficiency, reducing our environmental footprint, while also broadening our geographical scope in both Europe and the US.”
The agreement covers routes between ports in Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, the UK, Belgium and France, and ports on the Atlantic coast of the US from New York to Florida. It also includes the capacity to extend services to include routes around the world.
Higher rates on the transatlantic since the beginning of 2023 encouraged new entrants, including Ellerman, which closed its Asia-North Europe route and redeployed tonnage to the North Atlantic. However, recent months have seen freight rates on the trade nose-dive, largely as a result of widespread capacity injections
However, Ellerman has found succour in intra-EU routes, such as its North Europe to Iberia service, linking this to the transatlantic operation.
Ellerman’s US Express (USX) service has a port rotation of Bilbao-Antwerp-Rotterdam-Hamburg-Tilbury-New York-Jacksonville-Wilmington.
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