Friday, July 20, 2012

Maersk Renews Seattle Terminal Agreement


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.