News / Vado Ligure loses out as ONE revamps Mediterranean-USEC network

Photo: VesselFinder

APM Terminals’ Vado Ligure facility in Northern Italy is set to lose two direct links to the US east coast with the reorganisation of Mediterranean-US east coast joint services by CMA CGM, Cosco, OOCL and ONE.

In a customer advisory today, Japanese carrier ONE said its AT4 service (marketed as the Amerigo by CMA CGM, and Mena and WMA by Cosco and OOCL, respectively), would introduce a new port rotation at the beginning of February, which will also see a call at Salerno dropped and a call at Marseilles-Fos introduced.

The service, on which Yang Ming and Zim charter slots, will begin its new rotation on 4 February with the arrival of the 7,300 teu CMA CGM Endurance at La Spezia. The new rotation will be: La Spezia-Genoa-Fos-Valencia-Algeciras-Halifax-New York-Norfolk-Savannah-Miami-Algeciras-La Spezia.

Via an analysis of Xeneta’s eeSea liner database, The Loadstar understands that the call at Vado Ligure has been omitted from the service since at least October.

According to Sea-Intelligence’s latest schedule reliability data, the AT4/Amerigo service is one of the worst performers on the trade, with just 26.9% of its vessels arriving on time in November/December.

The same group of carriers are also rationalising their east Mediterranean-US east coast EMA service (marketed as TUX by CMA CGM), dropping calls at Vado Ligure and Genoa in favour of a call at Salerno, as well as dropping two calls – eastbound and westbound – at the Spanish transhipment hub of Algeciras.

This trimmed port rotation will begin with the call of the 4,400 teu CMA CGM Lapis at Iskenderun on 23 January, after which the revised call list will be: Iskenderun-Aliaga-Istanbul-Piraeus-Salerno-New York-Norfolk-Savannah-Iskenderun.

The departure of the two services from Vado Ligure, in which Cosco has a 40% stake, will leave the port with just seven services, according to eeSea, including Gemini’s Asia-Med Loop2 and Gemini’s Med-ECNA Bridge, two standalone transatlantic services from Grimaldi and CSRMA, and Maersk’s Europe-West Africa WAF6 string.

Meanwhile, the facility remains mired in local controversy, according to this analysis from Loadstar Premium, which details how the terminal, which was largely funded with public financing, has only so far managed to employ around one-third of the promised staff count – while a number of those who were employed are now fighting an unfair dismissal case in a tribunal.