South Korean feeder operator Sinokor Merchant Marine and its subsidiary Heung-A Line will streamline their South Korea-Japan and South Korea-China services, to cut service duplication.
The two companies each run an independent South Korea-South China service, which will be replaced by a joint service.
Heung-A will cease its independent SCS service while Sinokor will end its joint NSC service with Pan Ocean. The services will be replaced by a new service called SCX, which will be jointly operated by Sinokor and Heung-A.
Two chartered ships, the 1,118TEU A Mizuho and the 1,060TEU Kharis Heritage, will be deployed to SCX, which calls at Xiamen, Incheon, Gwangyang, Busan, Huangpu (Guangzhou), Shekou, Shantou and Xiamen.
In a similar fashion, Sinokor and Heung-A, which had deployed a total of three ships to a South Korea-north China-Japan service, have reduced capacity to just one vessel.
The A Mizuho was re-assigned from Heung-A’s Tohoku-Hokkaido Service 3 (THS3), which had its last sailing on 19 September.
Sinokor and Heung-A will launch Tohoku-Hokkaido Service 4 (TH4), with a chartered ship, the 1,100TEU Pacific Beijing, calling at Busan North Port, Busan New Port, Naoetsu, Akita, Tomakomai and Busan.
THS3 had been restructured since April, when the ports of call were cut from nine to six, and the number of ships reduced from three to two.
Sinokor and Heung-A are part of the K-Alliance, a shipping alliance promoted by the South Korean government to reduce overlaps in intra-Asia services.
Martina Li
Asia Correspondent
