In his keynote address recently at the TOC Asia in Hong Kong, SENATOR LINES' CEO Hans-Hermann Mohr gave an advance notice of SENATOR LINES' service upgrades effective the middle of this year. Continuing to respond to the booming Asian market, Mohr said that the German container carrier would strengthen its Europe-Asia services, offering increased direct port coverage in China and remarkable improvements in frequency and transit times.

"With this, our close co-operation within the CKYHS- alliance achieves a new quality and enables us to further reinforce our core competency in that segment", Mohr pointed out.

In his keynote at the TOC, Mohr stated that for some port pairs in the strong growing areas, regular weekly calls are not competitive anymore. "For ports such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Yantian, Singapore, Rotterdam and Hamburg a twice a week rotation is required."

The new service scope meets these market requirements.

As from June/July SENATOR LINES as a member of the CKYHS-alliance will offer four revised loops with upgraded port rotations and improved transit times.

A total of thirty-one 5,500-teu vessels, provided by COSCO and Hanjin will be deployed on these loops.

SENATOR LINES plans to continue the current slot exchange agreements with Yang Ming Line on the South China Pendulum (SCP) and North Europe-Japan Express (JES).

On the four revised loops SENATOR LINES will with additional capacity in North- and South China extend its calls at Shanghai with two sailings every week, offer four sailings from Hamburg and Felixstowe and three from Rotterdam. Furthermore the German container line will add new ports in the fast growing areas like Port of Nansha at the Pearl River Delta and Port of Kwangyang in Korea to its service network.

The upgraded Europe-Asia loops will have the following port rotations:

Loop 1: North China Express Service (NCX):

Shanghai o Dalian o Qingdao o Singapore o Port Said o Rotterdam o Felixstowe o Hamburg o Antwerp o Singapore o Hong Kong o Shanghai

Loop 2: Asia Europe Express Service (AEX):

Shanghai o Ningbo o Yantian o Port Klang o Colombo o Hamburg o Rotterdam o Felixstowe o Le Havre o Port Said o Colombo o Port Klang o Hong Kong o Shanghai

Loop 3: Far East Europe Express Service (FEX):

Xingang o Kwangyang o Busan o Chiwan o Hong Kong o Singapore o Rotterdam o Hamburg o Felixstowe o Singapore o Kaohsiung o Xingang.

Loop 4: South China Express Service (SCX):

Xiamen o Hong Kong o Nansha o Yantian o Jeddah o Antwerp o Hamburg o Felixstowe o Xiamen.

The fixed sailing schedule for these services will be available soon on www.senatorlines.com.