Hamburg Süd has revealed that it is offering its customers a new service profile for the SAWC Service between South America West Coast, Central America, the Caribbean, and North Europe.
According to the company, the weekly connection offers various highlights, such as competitive transit times with improved lead time from South America into London, and a very competitive transit time into Rotterdam with 25 days from Valparaíso.
From Europe, customers benefit from a direct service to the main South American west coast markets and to Hamburg Süd’s main transshipment hubs Cartagena, Caucedo, and Buenaventura.
“Hamburg Süd stands for quality, customer proximity, and tailor-made logistics solutions,' said Peter Frederiksen, member of the executive board of Hamburg Süd. 'As a premium carrier for reefer shipments, we are constantly improving our services and have invested around US$350m US dollars in our reefer container fleet in the past three years, making it one of the youngest in the market.
'Additionally, in the course of 2017, we will begin replacing existing tonnage with high reefer capacity newbuilds,' he added. 'These will be deployed for the EMCS Service between Europe, Mexico, and the Caribbean, thereby significantly increasing the number of reefer plugs in this service. This will enable us to respond even better and more flexibly to the specific demands of our customers in the region.”
At Hamburg Süd, a roughly 50-strong, worldwide Global Reefer Competence Team is working on developing state-of-the-art solutions for the shipment of fresh fruit and vegetables and on providing in-depth advice to customers on all questions surrounding reefer transportation.
Current service innovations for reefer shipments include:
Kiwifruit for Asia: Between March and the end of July 2017, the ASPA 1 Service (South America West Coast – Asia) is additionally calling at the Port of Tauranga in New Zealand, reflecting the heightened demand of the Asian markets for New Zealand kiwifruit.
Melons for America: Since December 2016, up until the end of April 2017, the WAMS Service (North America West Coast – Mexico/Guatemala/ Panama/Ecuador) has been additionally calling at San Lorenzo in Honduras, from where melons are exported to the USA.
Express cherries for China: Between November 2016 and January 2017, transit times for the ASPA 1 Service were reduced. This made it possible to ship cherries from Chile to Hong Kong within 22 days and to Shanghai in 25 days – in time for Chinese New Year celebrations.
