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With effect from 7 July, 2004, London-headquartered Hatsu Marine Ltd
has added an extra service to its rapidly growing network by taking
over from Lloyd Triestino full responsibility for the Intra Europe
Service (IES). Both Hatsu and Lloyd Triestino are members of the Evergreen
Group.
The IES service links the ports of Bilbao, Le Havre, Rotterdam, Gothenburg
and Thamesport on a weekly basis and is operated in association
with X-Press Container Line. It will be marketed by Hatsu as a European
regional
service whilst also meeting the Evergreen Group's requirements
for deepsea feeder connections between these five ports.
The IES service, which was inaugurated in October
2003, currently employs two vessels, Alexandra and Mira J, both of
which have a container capacity of approximately 400TEU at 14 tons
homogeneous weight. Their schedule involves a 14-day round trip cycle
with the following port rotation:
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Rotterdam
- Bilbao - Le Havre - Rotterdam - Gothenburg - Thamesport
- Rotterdam. |
According to Hatsu's President, Jason Lin, Hatsu is looking for further opportunities
in the North European market place:
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"In addition to
building up our global network, Hatsu is placing a high priority
on developing its North European feeder links. We want to
expand our network
to cover more outports in advance of the introduction of
larger
vessels over the next few years. Taking over responsibility
for the IES service is just the first step on this particular
road."
"And of course, the IES service is not only a feeder service.
We want to expand our shortsea intra-European business.
This is very much EU policy nowadays as congestion on Europe’s
roads is getting much
worse. At Hatsu, we want to play a part in helping industry
transfer freight off roads and onto shortsea vessels."
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