WASHINGTON: Spanish Algeciras Bay Port has added three new container shipping services, with one connecting TTI Algeciras’s semiautomatic terminal to ports in Cuba and Eastern Canada. Cuban shipping company MELFI Marine introduced a new Cuba-Spain-Canada service there. Using a fleet of three vessels, the MEDCAMEX service will connect the Spanish port with the Cuban port of Mariel in Cuba for the first time, with a transit time of 15 Days. It will also connect Algeciras Port to Halifax in Canada with a transit time of 10 days. An additional service connecting the port to Northern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean is jointly operated by three shipping companies.
These are French shipping Company CMA-CGM, German shipping company Hamburg Süd, and Maersk Group subsidiary Seago Line Shipping. It is called NC Levant and its rotation inlcudes Northern European ports such as Felixstowe, Antwerp and Hamburg as well as Eastern Mediterranean ports such as Alexandria, Beirut, Istanbul, Mersin and Port Said. Finally, the Israeli shipping company inaugurated a service called ZCA Container Service Atlantic that directly connects the port with New York with a transit time of 10 days, as well as with Mersin in Turkey with a transit time of 14 days. Rotation of the service includes calls at the ports of Ashdod and Haifa in Israel, Izmir and Mersin in Turkey and Piraeus in Greece.
ZIM has previously operated its ZCA eastbound New York-Ashdod service with a transit time of 22 days, Port 2 Port reported. It later announced that it would be restructuring and upgrading its services in the East Mediterranean beginning November 28, 2016. New services and customers continue to arrive at the terminal thanks to its commercial efforts and in spite of the climate of instability and questions over Spanish stowage systems, TTI Algeciras added.
