The members of THE Alliance have revealed an enhancement of their future Mediterranean-North America East Coast coverage, scheduled to start operating from April 2017.

Namely, the port rotation of its AL 6 service will be streamlined and the Spanish ports of Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia and Algeciras will be served through a new cooperation with Israel’s cargo shipping company ZIM on the latter’s existing Mediterranean North America loop.

This additional service will be branded as the AL 7, the alliance, consisting of Hapag-Lloyd, K Line, MOL, NYK and Yang Ming, said.

The new port rotation of the AL 6 service will be: Salerno, Livorno, La Spezia, Genoa (Italy), Fos (France), Halifax (Canada), New York, Norfolk, Savannah (US), Salerno (Italy).

THE Alliance’s port coverage in the AL 7 will be as follows: Barcelona, Tarragona, Valencia, Algeciras (Spain), Halifax (Canada), New York, Norfolk, Savannah (US), Valencia, Tarragona, Barcelona.

Both services will be launched at the beginning of April 2017 along with the implementation of THE Alliance, which is subject to completion of regulatory requirements.

The partners plan to deploy a fleet of more than 240 ships in the Asia/Europe, North Atlantic and Trans-Pacific trade lanes including the Middle East and the Arabian Gulf/Red Sea. The partners’ service network is expected to cover more than 24 ports in Asia including ten Chinese and five Japanese ports with direct calls as well as 20 ports in the US and Canada, six North European and 13 Mediterranean ports, six ports in the Middle East and six ports in Central America/Caribbean.

Separately, ZIM said that the planned changes encompass ZIM Container Service Italy (ZCI) and ZIM Container Service Atlantic (ZCA).

The firm plans to deploy 5 vessels in the ZCI service, while its ZCA service, operating 7 vessels, will focus on the East Med and Spain with a new call in Algeciras, serving the South Spain market and adding new direct calls in two Turkish ports, Izmir and Mersin.