After approximately 14 months as a temporary service, A.P. Moller – Maersk’s AE19 service, a combination of a short-sea and intercontinental rail product, has become a permanent weekly route.
The AE19 service complements Maersk’s regular Asia-Europe product offering based on conventional ocean services and offers highly competitive transit times from Asia to major ports in Europe.
The service is based on a short-sea connection between Asian origin ports in Korea, Japan or China and the port of Nakhodka in the Russian Far East (operated by Sealand Asia – A Maersk Company), followed by an intercontinental rail connection across Russia from Nakhodka to St. Petersburg, which takes 11 days.
The last leg of the product is another short-sea connection between St. Petersburg and ports in Finland (Helsinki and Rauma), continental Europe, such as Gdansk (Poland), Bremerhaven (Germany), or Scandinavia, operated by Sealand Europe.
Maersk has seen a high customer interest since July 2019, when the first cargo left the Russian Far East, so it has decided to give this service a permanent place in its product portfolio.
Being a standard product with a Maersk bill of lading for both refrigerated and dry containers, AE19 particularly attracts customers with time-sensitive cargoes, according to the company’s announcement, offering them faster transit times compared to ocean-only products and significant cost advantage compared to air freight.
In addition, blockchain platform TradeLens, jointly developed by IBM and Maersk, boosts the AE19 service offering with real-time shipping data directly from the source of each participating entity. Customers are able to avoid congestion on border crossings, while they are provided with fast track options for transit in Russia based on the blockchain solution.
The AE19 westbound service was launched more than a year ago, but the return leg, eastbound AE19 was launched in March this year, connecting North European origins with several destination ports in Asia.
