Hapag-Lloyd shuffles North Sea Poland Express service
German shipping line Hapag-Lloyd will soon change the route of its North Sea Poland Express service by removing three major container harbours of Europe from the schedule. This will allow the shipping company to enhance the maritime connectivity between the ports of Hamburg and Gdynia. The update will enter into force in late January 2022.
Hapag-Lloyd has decided to boost container traffic between the ports of Germany and Poland. To this end, it will change the route and schedule of the North Sea Poland Express (NPX) service. Starting from the fourth week of January, the rotation of this service will only include the ports of Hamburg and Gdynia: the first updated westbound rotation will start on 25 January and the eastbound one on 29 January. The travel time between the two harbours will take around three days. In Hamburg, NPX will call Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) and Container Terminal Tollerort (CTT).
The update of the NPX service also includes the removal of three ports from this line. Among them are Helsingborg in Sweden, Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp in Belgium. “With this new setup, we are introducing a one vessel rotation instead of the original two-vessel deployment,” Hapag-Lloyd stated in its announcement.
Other services to Poland
Besides the NPX service, Hapag-Lloyd provides two other lines between Germany and Poland. They are the Baltic Sea Express (BAX) and Poland Express (PEX) services. However, these connections include ship calls to other ports in addition to Hamburg and Gdynia. For instance, the BAX service has three more harbours in its schedule: Klaipeda in Lithuania, Muuga in Estonia and Rauma in Finland. The PEX line provides maritime connection between the ports of Hamburg, Kaliningrad and Gdynia. This service is a little bit slower for delivering boxes from Hamburg to Gdynia as the vessels initially call at Kaliningrad. As a result, the transit time takes four days.