The Grand Alliance (GA) announced the implementation of a ninth vessel (6,200 teus) to its Japan'North Europe service (EU1). The addition completes an environment-friendly program aimed at lowering emissions that has been implemented on the Grand Alliance North Europe'Far East services. By adding additional vessels, these services can operate at "ecospeeds" that will reduce emissions by 20'30%. The four GA partner lines have made substantial investments for the additional ships, which have been phased into their Europe'Asia loops.

The port coverage of the EU1 service remains unchanged. Higher schedule contingencies have been allocated to compensate for delays in congested ports, which occur as a result of the high volume in global container traffic. This allows the GA to improve schedule reliability without harming the environment.

Grand Alliance lines hope that our customers will welcome these measures to significantly reduce emissions and further increase service quality.

The Grand Alliance, formed in 1998, is the leading integrated consortium in global container shipping. Its members include Hapag-Lloyd (Germany), MISC Berhad (Malaysia), NYK (Japan), and OOCL (Hong Kong).