MAERSK SEALAND (Madison, NJ and Miami, FL) and CMA-CGM have officially announced a vessel sharing agreement with extensive coverage of the Caribbean Basin, effective September 11, 2000.
"Since starting our Caribbean service in 1998 with our own vessels and offices, we have seen the Caribbean market continue to expand and mature. This new vessel sharing agreement will create strategic benefits for Caribbean shippers and improve their competitive advantage in world markets", stated William C. Duggan, Director of Latin Americas Services for Maersk Inc., in Madison NJ.
Yann Dufour, CMA-CGM's Regional Director for the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico, stated "CMA-CGM has an historical commitment to the Caribbean market, most recently under the name Cagema. The vessel sharing agreement with Maersk Sealand will allow the deployment of bigger and faster vessels thereby improving the regularity of our services and improving coverage of the market."
Mr Donovan Martin, Managing Director of International Shipping, agents for CMA-CGM, welcomed the joint vessel sharing agreement, which would enable them to offer importers and exporters a better and more comprehensive access to a greater number of markets.
The new arrangement would also improve the regularity of their respective services by the use of bigger, faster vessels.
The agreement covers four strings of vessels jointly operated by Maersk Sealand and CMA-CGM, offering weekly sailings and deploying modern, high-speed container vessels for the fastest transit times in the trade.
Four, new optimised services will be offered:
Windward Service: Miami/St. Maarten/Antigua/St.Lucia/Barbados/Trinidad/Jamaica/Bahamas/Miami;
Inter-Island Feeder Service:
St. Lucia/Martinique/Dominica/St. Vincent/Trinidad/Grenada/Barbados/St. Lucia;
Guyana Feeder Service: Trinidad/Guyana/Suriname/Trinidad;
And, the Leeward Service: St. Maarten/St. Croix/San Juan, Puerto Rico/St. Maarten/St. Kitts/
Guadeloupe/St. Barthelmy/St. Maarten/San Juan, Puerto Rico/St. Thomas/St. Maarten.
The agreement covers vessel space only - each carrier will continue to operate their individual network of offices, terminals and containers.
Maersk Sealand is the container shipping division of the A.P. Moller Group of Copenhagen, Denmark, employing 10,000 people in 325 offices in 100 countries.
The company is the largest shipping line in the world.
CMA-CGM, headquartered in Marseilles, France, is the leading French container shipping line, operating nearly 100 container vessels with a capacity of 230,000 TEU served by 230 offices in 120 countries, employing 3,000 people.
