The inaugural arrival on April 28th 2010 at the Port of Hamburg meant that the number of Far East'Northern Europe liner services operated by the 'Grand Alliance' ' a consortium of the shipping companies Hapag-Lloyd, NYK and OOCL ' once again totals four. This latest scheduled service is listed as 'Loop D'; until December 2009, it was called 'EU-4'. It is operated jointly with the 'New World Alliance' (APL, MOL, HMM), where it is marketed under the name 'China Europe Express' (CEX). As well as this new, jointly operated service between Asia and northern Europe, the 'Grand Alliance' and the 'New World Alliance" each run three other own scheduled services. All seven services of these two syndicates call at the Port of Hamburg.

Since the beginning of this year, no fewer than three new scheduled liner services linking Hamburg and the Far East have started operations, bringing the total number of services on this route to 29. Additional new services have already been announced for May. There have also been three additions to existing feeder services in the year 2010, which means that currently there are around 50 feeder services operating between Hamburg and the Baltic region. A large proportion of Far East cargo transhipped through Hamburg goes to the Baltic region on board feeder ships.

The first vessel of the Loop D / CEX service to arrive in Hamburg was the NYK LYRA, with a carrying capacity of 6,182 TEU (20-foot standard containers). The NYK LYRA has 500 connections for refrigerated containers (reefers). The shipping companies APL, Hapag-Lloyd, NYK and OOCL are deploying ten container ships with carrying capacities between 5,700 and 7,500 TEU in this service.

The roundtrip of the weekly scheduled services takes 70 days, with ships sailing from Hamburg through the Suez canal and then directly to Singapore (transit time: 21 days), and from there to the Chinese ports of Chiwan, Shekou, Qingdao, Shanghai, Shekou and Yantian. The return leg of the journey has a further stop in Singapore before returning to northern Europe.

Containerized traffic with Asia via Hamburg reached a total volume of 4.2 million containers (TEU) in 2009. With 2.3 million TEU, the People's Republic of China (including Hong Kong) retained its top ranking among the ten most important trading partners in container traffic for the Port of Hamburg in 2009, ahead of Singapore. The top 10 trading partners also include South Korea, Malaysia and Japan.