Maersk Line has renewed
an agreement with SSA Marine to continue calling at the Port of Seattle’s Terminal
18, thus allowing the port to hang on to a customer that had previously been one
of the Port of Tacoma’s biggest clients.
“This is great news for
the Port of Seattle,” port CEO Tay Yoshitani said in a statement announcing the
deal. “SSA’s T-18 is big ship ready – they’ve made the investments in six new container
cranes capable of handling the largest ships in world. This cargo volume means jobs
will be staying here.”
Terms of the deal have not
been announced.
The agreement comes four
months after the Grand Alliance shipping consortium, consisting of the Hapag-Lloyd,
NYK and OOCL shipping lines, announced it was leaving Seattle’s Terminal 18 for
the Port of Tacoma. The switch became official earlier this month.
Maersk, the world’s largest
ocean carrier, calls the Port of Seattle via its TP9 service – a shared service
with CMA-CGM where both lines run 8 vessels each. The carrier moved from Tacoma
to Seattle three years ago due to an alliance between it and French containership
line CMA-CGM, which had already been calling at Terminal 18.
