APL’s 13,764gt/2001 built APL Guam made her maiden call at her namesake port of Guam on New Year’s Day, marking the maiden inbound shipment via APL’s Guam Saipan Express (GSX) service. Designed primarily to give Guam and Saipan shippers an alternative option for shipments from the U.S. mainland to these markets and vice versa, the GSX service connects with APL’s weekly U.S. flagged Eagle Express service (EX1) in both Yokohama, Japan and Busan, South Korea.

Atlantic Container Line’s first of five new g4 vessels, the 100,430gt and 296m long Atlantic Star, was delivered during the week beginning 27th October. The ship sailed from China on 31st October and joined ACL’s transatlantic service in December whilst the remaining four g4 vessels will be delivered during the first half of 2016. The Atlantic Star is a first of its kind vessel and the largest RoRo/Containership (ConRo) ever built. The ship incorporates an innovative design that increases capacity without significantly changing the dimensions of the vessel.

China Ocean Shipping Group Co. (COSCO) and China Shipping group Co. will become a new entity after merging, led by the latter’s current chairman. The former rivals said in December 2015 that they would merge through a series of asset swaps, creating units focused on distinct business areas such as container shipping and vessel leasing. After the merger, instigated due to the government moving to consolidate state owned industries, the newly established company will be chaired by Xu Lirong.

CMA CGM’s 18,000 TEU container ship CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin made her first U.S. call at the Port of Los Angeles on 26th December. The ship is named in honour of one of the United States’ founding fathers and is the largest ever to call at any port in the United States of America. The vessel later called at the Port of Oakland on 31st December prior to sailing for ports in China on 4th January. The 178,228gt and 2015 built CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin is deployed on the Pearl River Express, a service connecting the main China ports, including Xiamen, Nansha and Yantian, with the U.S. West Coast ports. The vessel, built with state-of-the-art technology, was delivered on 4th December 2015.

The G6 Alliance members are APL, Hapag- Lloyd, Hyundai Merchant Marine, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Nippon Yusen Kaisha and Orient Overseas Container Line.

Imoto Lines of Japan has taken delivery of the new 7,390gt/540 TEU coastal feeder vessel Natori complete with her innovative if not somewhat futuristic bridge located forward. The semi-spherical bow design is proprietary to Japan’s Kyokuyo Shipyard and was developed to help reduce wind resistance. This design has also been used on the car carriers City of St Petersburg and City of Rotterdam. The Natori is the first containership to carry this styling. In the case of the two car carriers, the design has been said to cut wind resistance by as much as 50% compared to traditional vessels, adding to fuel savings and lowering emissions.

MacAndrews and OPDR joined forces at the London Container Terminal in Tilbury as from 1st January, in favour of Thamesport, creating the biggest North European hub for the group with nine calls per week and over 450 calls annually. The hub offers the best connections to/from the UK, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Poland, Morocco and Canary Islands.

MSC’s MSC Maya made her debut at APM Terminals, Gothenburg, on 21st December thus becoming the largest containership ever to call in Sweden. The Port of Gothenburg is the only port in Sweden that can accommodate ships of this size. Since 2012, APM Terminals has planned to invest $115 million in the facility to establish Gothenburg as a deep-water hub for Scandinavia and the Baltic area. Gothenburg’s overall container throughput was 837,000 TEUs in 2014, with APM Terminals Gothenburg handling 759,000 TEUs, or approximately half of all Swedish container traffic for the year. The MSC Maya is the fourth of 20 planned Oscarclass ULCSs’ for MSC. In January, APM Terminals Gothenburg also hosted the MSC Zoe, sister ship to MSC Maya.

Streamlines announced on 7th January that its new Blue Stream weekly service will call at London Tilbury from 12th February, as part of a new service linking Northern Europe to and from the Caribbean, Central America and Florida. Streamlines, which is part of the SeaTrade group, is a niche container line which operates in the Caribbean, with a strong focus on perishable cargo, and has launched this new service as part of their development plan. The new service commenced in January 2016 from North Europe and arrived for its inaugural call at Tilbury on the 12th February. This rotation will prove to be one of the fastest Caribbean links to the UK. The rotation will be Rotterdam-Tilbury-Radicatel (Le Havre)-Fort de France-Pointe a Pitre-Philipsburg-Moin-Puerto Cortes-Santo Tomas de Castilla-Rotterdam-Tilbury.

United Arab Shipping Company’s al Muraykh, one of the world’s greenest containerships, loaded a world record 18,601 TEUs in mid-December and sailed from Port Klang in Malaysia bound for the UK as part of the Ocean Three alliance’s AEC1 service. This unprecedented westbound shipment was also UASC’s highest utilisation to date of this class of ship, meaning the Co2 output per TEU on this journey is set to be more than 60% lower if the same containers were shipped on board a 13,500 TEU ship. The 195,636gt al Muraykh was delivered in august 2015 at Hyundai Samho Heavy industries as part of a new build program comprising eleven 15,000 TEU vessels and six 18,800 TEU LNG-ready vessels. The ship docked at DP World London gateway Port on 1st January as her first port of call in Europe to unload 3,800 containers.