Maersk Line has announced it will adjust its Trans-Pacific 6 service (TP6) to add a direct call from South Vietnam to the US west coast.
With the direct TP6 service, the company will become the first carrier to introduce the ‘Post-Panamax' class (9000 TEU) of vessels to Vietnam, and the first sailing will be on the Mathilde Maersk on 12 May.
The new service will call at the SP-PSA International Terminal in Vung Tau, Vietnam, a deepwater facility for large vessels 80km south of Ho Chi Minh City, near the mouth of the Cai Mep-Thi Vai River.
The service will arrive on Sundays into the APM Terminals facility in Los Angeles delivering the cargo in just 18 days, while westbound port rotations will remain unchanged.
"Our customers have requested this direct call and the time is right to include a direct service from Vietnam in our network," said Maersk Line's North American sales manager Bill Woodhour in a press release.
"This call will complement our other Trans-pacific products, giving our customers comprehensive coverage with unmatched service reliability."
The general director of Maersk Line in Vietnam, Peter Smidt-Nielsen, shares the excitement about the new service.
"We have worked hard to meet this demand and make it feasible to call Vung Tau with the largest vessels ever to call a Vietnamese port, and are thrilled to introduce such a competitive and reliable product to this exciting and growing market," Mr Smidt-Nielsen said.
With a deployment of fourteen vessels, eastbound ports of call include Tanjung Pelepas (Malaysia), Vung Tau (Vietnam), Yantian (China), Hong Kong and Los Angeles.
The westbound rotation will be Los Angeles, Yokohama (Japan), Nagoya (Japan), Shanghai (China), Ningbo (China), Xiamen (China), Hong Kong, Yantian and Tanjung Pelepas.
Maersk's Vietnam service to and from the US East Coast will remain unchanged on the TP3 & TP7 services.
