By Dale Crisp
In a third major liner service development emerging late last week Triple A consortium members OOCL and PIL have announced they will be joined by COSCO Shipping Lines as a third vessel-operating partner and will restore their Australia-South East Asia operation to a twin-loop product.
This basically re-institutes the same market offering that was abandoned in May 2017, after previous consortium member Mitsui OSK Lines decamped to Maersk's Boomerang service.
Commencing from 30 July in Laem Chabang the 'new' AAA1 (the old Torres Loop) will rotate Laem Chabang, Singapore, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Fremantle, Singapore, Laem Chabang with OOCL to supply three ships and PIL two, while COSCO will take the slot equivalent of half a ship from PIL.
From 5 August in Singapore AAA2 (the old Bight Loop) will sail Singapore, Port Klang, Fremantle, Melbourne, Adelaide, Singapore; OOCL will deploy two ships and PIL and COSCO one each. Yang Ming Line will continue to have slots on Triple A but only on AAA1.
Whereas the current single loop uses ships of 5700 TEU the dual weekly loops will revert to employment of 4250 TEU classic panamaxes. Both loops will use Patrick terminals in all Australian ports (except Adelaide where FACT is, of course, the only available facility).
According to available information the resumption of the previous Triple A format will not result in any changes to the rival ASAL service, in which COSCO SL and OOCL are both partners along with Hapag-Lloyd/UASC, and on which PIL has some slots.
(NB: PIL refers to the Triple A loops as AA1/AA2 and will re-designate ASAL as AA3.)
The full text of the announcements from carriers can be accessed via the following links.
http://www.oocl.com/eng/aboutoocl/corporatemessages/2018/Pages/15jun18.aspx
http://pae.com.au/news/south-east-asia-australia-service-update-service-enhancement-new-aa1-aa2-15-06-18/